What happened to the Dragons???

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by alatar

Now this might be deserving of its own thread, but why exactly was the Green Dragon named as such? No hobbits, save Bilbo, ever saw a dragon and lived to make a living by it. Where did the idea come from then?

Prancing Ponies and Floating Logs I understand, but dragons?

The Hobbits would have had legends of dragons from the time of their dwelling in Wilderland before they crossed the Misty Mountains. That wasn't all that far from the Withered Heath. Bilbo didn't need Gandalf or any of the Dwarves to tell him Smaug was anything but a dragon. He knew what that meant, so presumably other Hobbits retained some lore of dragons, though it had likely passed into myth by that point.
The founder of The Green Dragon, having never faced a live dragon himself, may have thought the name whimsical, something that would set his place apart from the 'Logs', 'Perches', and 'Bushes' in the area.