Types of Fairies
Brownie, Pixie, Banshee, Changeling, Deva, Dryad, Gnome, Water Guardian, Kelpie, Sylph, Merfolk, Bogie, Dwarf, Giant, Goblin, Sprite, Troll, Dullahan, Harpie, Pùca, Trow, Undine, Alven, Hobgoblin, Centaur, Greenie, Nixen, Phooka, Ballybog, Sidhe, Leprechaun, Elf, Kobold, Nymph, Salamander, Selkie, Will O’Wisp, Boggart…
Listed above are a collection of names and types of fairies, or more accurately, the term ‘fae’. There are more types, but this is a fairly extensive list of commonly used names for the ‘folk’. In addition to this list, there is also country specific names for other types of fairies based on region, such as Callicantzaroi, Mediterranean goblins, Chin-chin Kobakama, a Japanese house fairy, Domovoi, a Slavic house fairy, Jimaninos, Mexican Trooping fairies, Menehuna, Hawaiian and Polynesian tropical fairies, Rusalki, Russian water fairy, Tomtra, Finnish house fairy, Monaciello, Italian house fairy, Vile, Slavic nymph fairy and so on.
Then there are the classifications of fairies, such as the fae of the Seelie and Unseelie courts otherwise described as the Light and Dark fae, the fairies that are organized into the 4 or six elements, fire, water, earth, air, light, and mind, or the trooping and solitary fairies described by William Butler Yeats, or, as Robert Hunt of Cornwall works it out, the Small People, the Spriggans, the Piskies, the Buccas, Bockles or Knockers, and the Brownies. Then there is Wirt Sikes and his formal organization of Welsh fairies, the Ellyllon (elves), the Bwbachod (household spirits), the Coblynau (spirits of the mines), the Gwragedd Annwn (lake maidens), and the Gwyllion (mountain spirits). Other classifications are color based, white, green or black, or simply good and evil (bad), or gentle and playful, or malicious and devilish as Lady Gregory described.
It is a lot to organize. I’ve added some links below, by no means exhaustive, but enough to get one started if one is so disposed to enter the fray of organizing the lot. Me? I’m happy to gloss over things, and like to focus on fairies with wings, either physically or in spirit, and fairies that share good heart and magic. But I do have to wonder a bit about two or three aspects of the fae, which the names and categories prompt me to think about, such as archetypes. Ty Hulse describes fairy archetypes as Peter Pan types, Fate Bringers, and Water Mothers. Then there are the archetypal classifications of the elements, water, earth, air, fire, characteristics of those elements such as ice and metal, and other descriptions as time and power.
However when I mean archetypes, I am wondering about what a troll or selkie or elf reflects in human psychology and human design, what aspect it reflects of me or others. For instance, how leprechauns like gold (greed) or pixies (playful youth). I also wonder about the origin of fae stories, such as a changeling (a baby that doesn’t look like the father), or house fairies (houses that mysteriously clean themselves), or mermaids (lonely men too long at sea). I just wonder, I’ve been out in isolated places, exposed, you see things. And when someone else says they’ve seen things, what am I supposed to think? And finally, I wonder if the fae are real, and the nature of their reality, and my own. That of course, is a really, really messy question, maybe for another day, but… I still wonder as I wander through my days, picking up sea shells on the ocean shore of my life.
For further reading and definitions and classifications…