The name Demogorgon is introduced in a discussion of Thebaid 4.516, which mentions 'the supreme being of the threefold world' ( triplicis mundi summum). The commentary has been attributed incorrectly to a different Lactantius, the Christian author Lucius Caelius Firmianus Lactantius, even though the commentator appears to have been Mithraic. The Lactantius Placidus commentary became the most common medieval commentary on the poem by Statius and is transmitted in most early editions up to 1600. Derivation and history ĭemogorgon is first mentioned in the commentary on Statius's Thebaid often attributed in manuscripts to a Lactantius Placidus, (c. Various other theories suggest that the name is derived from a combination of the Greek words δαίμων daimon (' spirit' given the Christian connotations of 'demon' in the early Middle Ages)-or, less likely δῆμος dêmos ('people')-and γοργός gorgós ('quick') or Γοργών Gorgṓn, the Ancient Greek monsters first attested in Hesiod's Theogony.

The name variants cited by Ricardus Jahnke include the Latin 'demoirgon', 'emoirgon', 'demogorgona', 'demogorgon', with the first critical editor Friedrich Lindenbrog (Fridericus Tiliobroga) having conjectured 'δημιουργόν' as the prototype in 1600. Art historian Jean Seznec concludes that 'Demogorgon is a grammatical error, become god.' Boccaccio, in his influential Genealogia Deorum Gentilium, cites a now-lost work by Theodontius and that master's acknowledged Byzantine source ' Pronapides the Athenian' as authority for the idea that Demogorgon is the antecedent of all the gods. The origins of the name Demogorgon are not entirely clear, though the most prevalent scholarly view now considers it to be a misreading of the Greek δημιουργόν ( dēmiourgón, accusative case form of δημιουργός, ' demiurge') based on the manuscript variations in the earliest known explicit reference in Lactantius Placidus (Jahnke 1898, Sweeney 1997, Solomon 2012).

Castle clash here be demon