"talking about nagas today"

Racist.

Close enough, if you ask me.

Technically, a naga is a creature out of Indian (the continent, not Native American) myth- usually portrayed as being serpents with human heads (usually but not always female), sometimes with human upper torsos, arms and head. They're generally guardian spirits, thought there are NASTY nagas as well. They often have an elemental aspect ( water, spirit and the like ).

While this is the correct historical definition of "naga," Western fantasy authors have picked it up and run with it, giving a newer Western twist.

Sometimes--though not always--the gender-specificity is dropped, so you have both male and female naga. Usually the connection to water is played up, making Western naga fish-people, shark-people, or aquatic lizardmen (sort of a lizardman equivalent of merpeople). Sometimes (and this happens in Japanese works featuring naga too), the elemental association is flipped, so a "red" naga is a naga of fire, whereas a "blue" or "green" naga is one of the water/ocean.

World of Warcraft is a prime example here. Its naga are corrupted Night Elves, twisted by the magic of an eldritch abomination so that they could survive the collapse of their civilization's capital into the ocean. The males are generally (but not always) low-brains, high-brawn soldiers, while the females are generally spindly witches or the like. Exceptions exist on both sides, but aren't common. Also, the models for the WoW naga have been re-used, with red/orange colors instead of blue/green, to represent sentient salamander-like creatuers who originate in the Elemental Plane of Fire. I dunno if those creatures have a species name; I've never heard it, but that doesn't mean much.

I was sticking with Indian myth. I know of all the D&D and other stuff, but I wasn't touching on that. :)

Understood. I was mostly providing some additional detail for TruNorth. It's a lot more likely that he's seen World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy (where fairly "western/modern" style naga appear) than that he's read a traditional Indian myth. :)

Naga... I wonder if he meant the Naga monsters from Monster Rancher. :O

Very interesting mythological creatures. Nice.

He's a cutie patootie. I love the enthusiastic expression~

awesome naga man :D