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In 1380, John Wycliffe produced the first complete English translation of the Bible, while the more notable King James Translation (Authorized Version) appeared in 1611. At this point, the translators of Hebrew did not have an English word equal to tanniym (meaning “great lizard”), so they typically used the word dragon. Tanniym is found 25 times in the Old Testament, including in Genesis 1:21. In this context, the word is used to describe the creation of great ocean-dwelling creatures. Various translations treat this word differently:“And God created great whales”

--King James Version “And God created the great Sea monsters”
--New American Standard Version “So God created the great [sea] creatures”
--New International Version and The Living Bible

Of the other 24 uses of the same word, the King James Version uses dragon 22 times. Other translations use words such as sea serpent, reptile, ravening monster, and crocodile. Over five and a half centuries after the first English translation of the Bible, Richard Owen, aware of several dinosaur fossils unearthed in southern England, gave these massive creatures the name dinosauria, from Latin, meaning “terrible lizard.” This name first appeared in a paper that he presented to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, published in 1842.