Properly speaking, if one's mind isn't dominated by D&D, "drow" can refer to several things: 1: To dry up (from "adrough"--to be dry). 2: A fit of illness or fainting (from "dree"--to endure or suffer) 3: A cold mist or drizzle (Scots, derivation unknown) 4: To throw (Cornwall/Devon dialect) 5: Past tense of "to draw" (obsolete) 6: A variant of "trow", Orkney dialect for "troll". If one's mind is dominated by D&D and looks no further afield, then one only knows of "bad" elves who live underground. It should be noted that the Orkneying version of "drow" was noted as follows in at least one source: 1868 D. GORRIE Summ. & Wint. Orkneys v. 168 The trows, or drows,..resembled the daoine shith of the Highlanders, in the malevolent feelings which they..entertained towards mankind. These Orkney "daoine shith" are at the very least linguistically related to the Daoine Sidhe of Ireland, who are often considered a basis for the D&D "elf" (with or without any actual resemblance between the D&D "elf" and the tales of the Daoine Sidhe). Thus, since the "drow" of the Orkneys are a malevolent version of the Daoine Sidhe, it makes some sense to use the term as the name of the "bad elves" for a D&D setting. You don't want to know my theory regarding why a type of elf that D&D has traditionally painted as the most evil of all races has black skin. It's not very complimentary to the minds of D&D's designers.