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Meaning & History
The name of the main character in American author Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle novels. In the novels Eragon is a dragon-rider, and in interviews Paolini has stated he came up with Eragon's name by changing the first letter of the word dragon. Some posit that Paolini got Eragon from the character Erragon from author Anne McCaffery's Pern series, also featuring dragons and from which Paolini has admitted being influenced. McCaffery herself may have gotten the name from the character Erragon from The Battle of Lore, of the Poems of Ossian (c.1760), Ossian being the fictional narrator Gaelic myths and legends created by Scottish poet James Macpherson.