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What makes the traditional fantasy races prone to the racial analysis which has been lamented in the other answers is the simple fact that each of these fantasy races is a variant of humanity, and thus can be compared to real-life human ethnic groups.
Just to add... goblins, trolls, kobolds, ocs, minotaurs, gorgons, basilisks/cockatrices, and kracken are all from mythology, so those names are even fair game... though you may do well to disassociate any kobolds in your story from the description in AD&D, because the AD&D description seems rather different from the kobolds of myth.
Using old fantasy races is a good short-hand to have an easily done job without having to set up much and I believe something like that can only be done seriously when the work is supposed to play/subvert existing tropes.
Lazy use of fantasy races (established or otherwise) carries a risk of providing deeply unsatisfactory answers to those questions. Sensible use of fantasy races adheres to established convention and provides readers with information that would otherwise require lengthy and boring exposition to convey.
In fantasy, we've become accustomed to having a lot of different races; let's think about all the familiar elves, orcs, trolls, goblins, dwarves and whatnot. All share in common having two legs, two arms, one brain and the ability to use it to some extent. The classic definition of fantasy race also implies human-like sentience.
In fantasy stories Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Giants, Trolls, etc. are members of different species which coexist with human characters. And I find annoying that people write about different fantasy races when they are actually different fantasy species.
If your fantasy creature is commonly spoken of, the name for it should be simple. Remember that words evolve over time. If there is a thing that has existed for at least as long as the current language, and which people regularly talk about, its name will naturally be shortened until the length and difficulty match its usage.
Given that there is enough racial diversity within humankind it does seem redundant to use fantasy races just for the sake of it. My current work in progress will be using a number of racial profiles for want of a better phrase that allow for characters to show prejudice and create "underclasses" and the forming of "ghettos" in the city that ...
In urban fantasy style fiction with multiple supernatural characters, is it understandable to the reader if race names of each group are a combination of stereotypical species names (such as 'vampire' or 'fairy') with made-up names or regular names that have been altered somehow?
OK, in a lot of fantasy fiction hybrids (half-orcs, half-elves, etc.) are fairly common, so perhaps "race" is technically accurate in those cases, but you get the point. So rather than jargonizing, let's settle for more common speach: the intelligent races.