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| Untitled by Melnorr on DeviantArt |
The word "lich" comes from Middle English lich, from Old English līċ, from Proto-Germanic *līką, from Proto-Indo-European *līg-. It is cognate with Dutch lijk, German Leiche, Norwegian lik, Swedish lik and Danish lig. Related to words like, -like, -ly.
Lich being an old English word for "corpse", the gate at the lowest end of the cemetery where the coffin and funerary procession usually entered was commonly referred to as the "lich gate" (or "lych gate"). This gate was quite often covered by a small roof where part of the funerary service could be carried out.
Various works of fantasy fiction, such as Clark Ashton Smith's "Empire of the Necromancers" (1936), had used lich as a general term for any corpse, animated or inanimate, before the term's specific use in fantasy role-playing games. The more recent use of the term lich for a specific type of undead creature originates from the 1976 Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game booklet Greyhawk, written by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz.
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