https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2021-02-08

In this article, and articles previously, Mark talks about why Giant Ox (and other creatures) that have giant in their name aren't typed as giants.
His argument being that giant can be both a noun and an adjective. It's the same argument he's always made and I can understand his approach.

But there's a rebuttal I feel compelled to make.
If the issue is that you have to be a Giant for the creature type... Define what a Giant is and tell me how that's different than being giant.

I mean MTG's giants, with few exceptions, tend to be pretty consistently portrayed as basically almost-elemental-but-not-quite humanoids.

Sure, there's an argument to be made for things like Kaldheim's giants and the Titans cycle.

But then there's Lorwyn, Ravnica, and tons of examples of basically just... Big people.
Now, in that it's kind of the same argument over quibbling about dwarves or elves, but at least there's a consistency to them most often that makes them unique.

Other than their size, and possibly lifespan, giants are radically inconsistent.

The "few exceptions" being probably at least every other giant, including almost the entirety of Lorwyn?

Giants are a race like any other, what that entails depends on the plane. You don't become a giant by enlarging yourself any more than you become an elemental by setting yourself on fire (although if mtg made a card that was an enlarged human it would probably have the giant type).

Hell, for that matter, what actually makes Jareth a giant?
By all rights he's a cat construct.

And yet Iona, who is skyscraper sized isn't a giant angel?

Lorwyn is very much the exception. Right after we're followed by elemental giants in Shadowmoor.

Dominaria, Ravnica, Alara, Paliano, Ixalan and Kylem are also exceptions then I take it?

Zendikar would be an exception, too, in that case.

One of the key things though is that "being Giant" vs "being giant" is an inter vs intra comparison. Considering Radha and the Kor, having Giant as a creature type is more about people being more familiar with Humans as a whole than other creature types and thus more willing to subcategorize the Human-like species. It's kinda like Dog vs Wolf as opposed to Insect.

Do you mean Fiora?

Ixalan doesn't have giants. Alara and Kylem only had one giant each* and Fiora had only two* and I don't remember much if any flavor on giants on these world (the wiki doesn't even have a section for these worlds on the giants page). Not sure we can ride them off as not elemental since we have giants like Kalemne and her captain who don't out right look elemental like and look just like big people.

*There are more giants but as a reprint side set these giants are not flavor-wise set on this world.

I'd agree with Heliosphoros, giants are a race of sometimes elemental based, sometimes not, humanoids that are larger than most of the other beings on a world. Jareth seems to be the only that breaks this and imo not sure should be one.

Fiora yeah, and I assume that Dargo is from Ixalan, but I guess it's not explicitly stated anywhere. I'm not actually sure where I got Alara from, I think I was confusing it with the Zendikar symbol. I'm not going to deny that giants often have elemental associations, probably inspired by their D&D incarnation to a large extent, but a very sizeable portion of them aren't, and I'm not going to assume that all of Ravnica's giants all secretly imbued with elemental powers.

I mean, doesn't this apply to dwarves too? The only thing all dwarves have in common is being "a species that's like humans, but shorter", so why can't giants exist as "a species that's like humans, but bigger"?

Dwarves do tend to have consistently squatty features, outside of Shadowmoor's goblin-like duergar.

Dwarves also usually have a distinctive culture, talent or behavior that distinguishes them. While one could argue the behavior, giants aren't nominally known for developing culture or a specialty as a people.

they probably use the word giant when something feels like a giant

which is probably the case for most but not all large humanoids