The Word "vampire": Its Slavonic Form and Origin

Author(s): Brian Cooper

Source: Journal of Slavic Linguistics, Vol. 13, No. 2 (summer—fall 2005), pp. 251-270
Published by: Slavica Publishers
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24599658
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 The Word vampire: Its Slavonic Form and Origin

Brian Cooper

Abstract. After an examination of some of the historical and linguistic background to the
word vampire, including its links with the purity of the earth, a new etymology is
proposed for the word based on Common Slavonic borrowing from Dacian Latin and
interborrowing of words within the Balkan Sprachbund.

It would be as well from the start to establish and maintain a clear dis

tinction between the word vampire, which is generally held to be Slavonic

in origin, and the popular concept of what is now called vampirism
which in one form or another has an ancient history, going back
Assyria, Babylonia, and beyond. Belief in the vampire in Slavonic legen
is ultimately linked with spirits of the dead. Among the Slavs the spirits o
the dead were not only venerated but also feared, especially the spirits o
the so-called unclean dead, who had died a premature and unnatur
death.1 It was believed that they thirsted for the things they had lost and

Even the supposedly innocent dying prematurely, such as a newborn baby or young
maiden, were in danger of becoming a harmful spirit, the so-called navka/mavka an
rusalka (Perkowski 1976: 40-41; Vinogradova 2000: 35-36, 43-45). The spirits of unb
tized children are called mavky in Ukrainian, njavki in Carpathian speech, navje/mavje in
Slovene, navi in Macedonian and Serbian, navi/navjaci in Bulgarian; cf. Old Church
Slavonic/Old Russian nav' 'dead', dialectal Russian nav', nav'e, navej 'dead body', Latvia
nave 'death', Gothic naus (plural naweis) 'dead body', nawis 'dead'. Russian navij den'
Ukrainian navs'kyj velykden', was akin to Belarusian dzjady (see footnote 2 and Perkowsk
1976: 29). It is the navi to which belongs the Romanian/Wallachian pricolici mentioned by
Afanas'ev as a type of vampire or werewolf (Perkowski 1976:163; Vinogradova 2000: 35
also known as tricolici, it is probably derived from Greek thrix 'hair' + lukos 'wolf', thus
exactly corresponding to Slavonic volkodlak (see footnote 2 and also Cioranescu 1996: s.
pricoloci). Similar to these are the Russian rusalki, water nymphs springing from
unbaptized, drowned or suffocated children, especially girls or young maidens, and th
Bulgarian rusaliti), rusal(ij)ki, rusanki, who are often said to emerge from water only at th
time of rusal'naja or rusal'skaja nedelja during the spring or Whitsun celebrations (O
Russian rusalija < Latin rosalia [a ceremony of adorning tombs with garlands of roses]
Medieval Greek rhousalia 'festival of roses'; cf. Old Serbian rusalija 'Pentecost', Serb
Croat rusalje 'Trinity Sunday', Bulgarian rusalija 'week before Trinity Sunday'), whenc
comes the name rusalka (see Vinogradova 2000: 44; Perkowski 1976: 73; Vasmer 1964-73
s.v. rusalka).

Journal of Slavic Linguistics 13(2): 251-70, 2005.

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252 BRIAN COOPER

so tried to return to life, to the potential danger of the living. In investi

gating the origin of the word, one must disentangle this original belief
from the later accretions of vampirism, especially the blood-drinking
aspects (see Vaillant 1931: 675-676). The vampire can be the ghost of a
dead person (cf. one of its many Serbo-Croat names, ljugat < Albanian
lugat 'specter, ghost'); in parts of the Balkans it is called ten(j)ac and
appears as a shadow. Or it can be a living corpse animated by either its
own or an evil spirit, especially among the Bulgarians, where it is also
called plat(en)ik < plat 'body' (Moszyriski 1934, cited in Perkowski 1976:
180). In the Slav world these beliefs belong mainly to the Balkans and
Ukraine but exist also as far west as Kashubia in northern Poland, whence
they were imported to Canada (see Perkowski 1976: 189-190).
If Poles call the vampire upior (with various dialectal forms, e.g.,
wypior), apparently a borrowing from Ukrainian with -id- by false associa
tion with pioro 'feather' (Bruckner 1934: 279, 1957: 594; cf. Old Polish
upierz), Kashubians have opi [= uopi], upi [= uupi], lopi, lupi (with genitive
opego, etc.), and also regionally hapi, ropi, uepi/uepi, (po)iap, nelap upor, upon
(Moszynski 1934: 666; Perkowski 1976: 190; Sychta 1967- III: 332). The
other West Slavonic names are Czech and Slovak upir. In East Slavonic
there are Russian upyr' (dialectally upir', obyr'), Belarusian upyr, upir
(dialectally upar, vupar), and Ukrainian upyr, dialectal opyr (genitive upyrjd,
opyrja), vopyr and vepyr (the last two similar to some Bulgarian forms
noted below, an effect doubtless due to the important contribution of the
Balkan population in southern Russia, see Vaillant 1931: 673), and also
vampyr, vampir, the European form which occurs in virtually all Slavonic
languages: Russian and Belarusian vampir, Czech vampyr, Slovak vampir,
Polish wampir, Upper and Lower Sorbian wampir, and among South
Slavonic languages Serbo-Croat vampir (dialectally lampir, lampijer),
Slovene and Macedonian vampir, and Bulgarian vampir(in), dialectally
vapir, vapir, vepir(in), Ijapir. The Serbo-Croat is a variant of an older upir, to
judge by the seventeenth-century form upirina cited from Palmotic by
Vaillant (1931: 674), who is inclined to see it as evidence for a word upirin,
parallel to Bulgarian vampirin:

Posred kopna, posred mora On land and sea, all there

sve sto je vrazieh grdobstina, is of the devil's monsters,
pustolovic, uzma, mora, intriguers, ghosts, night
[vjukodlaka, upirina. mares, werewolves, vampires.

The point is important because it is in South Slavonic that the Euro

pean word is thought to have originated and passed to the rest of the

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 THE WORD VAMPIRE: ITS SLAVONIC FORM AND ORIGIN 253

Balkans and the Slav world, and eventually to western Europe, where it
became associated with a much distorted view of the vampire; cf. German
Vampir (earlier Vampyr, Vampyer, Vampyres, Wampler en), Danish/Swedish
vampyr, Dutch vampir, French vampire, Italian/Spanish/Portuguese vampiro.
Zelenin, who first showed most of what Vinogradova calls "personazi
necistoj sily" (2000: 27) to be associated with the category of zaloznye pokoj
niki, has given an illuminating summary of the Slav beliefs that underpin
the vampire legend. The unclean dead were known to Russians as domo
viki,2 i.e., those staying "at home" and not proceeding to the next world, or
as pokojniki zaloznye (more rarely, but probably more precisely, zalozennye),
i.e., those corpses not originally buried in the earth for fear of defiling or
profaning it and arousing its wrath, but thrown into gullies and covered
with branches and the like (Zelenin 1917: 400-404).3 Vinogradova
emphasizes repeatedly that most current researchers in the field incline to
accept Zelenin's insight (2000: 27, 29): "Detailed examination of Common

2For the domovik, domovoj, etc. as spirits of the home, Latin lares and penates, see
Vinogradova 2000: 37-41. Perkowski (1976: 30, 27) notes how Slav terms like Russian dcd,
deduska, Ukrainian did, did'ko (domovyk), Czech dedek were widely applied to the house
hold gods (deduska domovoj was widespread in Russia), suggesting that they had their
origin in ancestor worship, i.e., the spirits of ancestors were thought to protect the home;
hence such family feasts as the Belarusian dzjady, which commemorate the dead; cf.
Polish dziady, the ceremony calling forth spirits of the dead. However, Vlasova, in her
recent encyclopedic dictionary of superstitions (1998), notes that Russians call not just
their ancestors but nearly all unclean spirits ded, deduska (Vinogradova 2000: 48). Words
for aunt, sister, or (grand)mother are widely used by Slavs for spirits causing illnesses.
This ambivalence about spirits of the dead is naturally reflected in revenants, who can
return not only to do harm but also to help, when they may be called by specific names,
e.g., in Istria krsnik, kresnik, karsnik.
Zelenin (1917: 404) notes that the term zaloznye (pokojniki) still survives in Vjatka
province (or at least it did in his day) and gives this definition of it: "zalozennye, zakla
dennye, zakrytye kol'jami, doskami ili suc'jami, v protivopoloznost' pokojnikam zaxoro
nennym" [piled up, covered over with stakes, planks, or branches, as opposed to corpses
buried]. Such corpses were believed to be in the service of the devil (necistaja sila). They
were characterized by an enormous thirst and, if buried, sucked all moisture from the
surrounding earth, causing droughts, so that their grave needed regular watering to
ensure they had drink (Zelenin 1917: 401-402). Being unclean, the pokojniki zaloznye
(necistye) could not be buried for fear of provoking the wrath of the earth. It was believed
that the earth would reject them (zemlja ne prinimaet 'the earth does not accept [someone]'
is still used as a term of abuse), and that they would either emerge from the earth again,
usually at night, no matter how many times they were buried, or not join with the earth
by decomposing, even if they stayed in it. The pagan basis of this belief is clear from the
way it conflicts with the Orthodox Christian teaching, e.g., on sacred relics. After the
Christianization of Rus' an uneasy compromise was sometimes reached whereby zaloznye
pokojniki were buried in a so-called ubogij dom 'charnel-house' (see Dal' 1912-14: s.v. ubo
gij), but not covered by earth. These ubogie doma were not abolished until the time of
Catherine the Great.

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254 BRIAN COOPER

Slavonic beliefs makes all the more convincing D. K. Zelenin's conclusion

that practically all the so-called 'spirits of nature' [which could control,
and change into, natural elements] are in their origin associated with
zaloznye pokojniki" (2000: 43); cf. Vukanovic's account of the belief of
Balkan people from towns of the Kosovo-Metohija region that a vampire
sprang from a dead person who, while alive, was impure and so was not
accepted by the earth (Perkowski 1976: 209). Summarizing data from dif
ferent Slavonic traditions, Vinogradova identifies three categories of un
clean dead: those dying an unnatural death ("ne svoej smert'ju"); those
not finally severing links with the living, especially relatives, for various
reasons; and those in touch with evil forces in life, such as sorcerers,
witches, and those possessed by evil spirits (2000: 30). She emphasizes
(2000: 28, 31, 33) the difficulty of separating the xodjacij pokojnik (usually
visiting kin) from the vampire, in that the difference lies mainly in the
greater personalization of the latter: the first is a revenant, disembodied
and often invisible, appearing as a shadow or a wind, etc., while the
second is a reanimated corpse, with either a skeletal or a swollen body.
Common to both is the link to a specific dead person, its return to its own,
the harm done (or help given) by it and the protective measures against it.
The association with blood is probably not primal but due to the bloody
business required to kill the revenant or vampire in the grave by behead
ing or piercing with a stake, at least if Vuk Karadzic is right under the
entry vukodlak in his Rjecnik (cited by Vaillant 1931: 676).4

4 Among the Slavs, especially the South Slavs, vampirii was more or less contaminated by
Old Church Slavonic vlukodlaku 'werewolf', a free caique of modern Greek lukanthropos
'savage, wolf man' perhaps influenced by the Latin equivalent versipellis, literally 'that
changes its skin' < verto + pellis (Miklosich 1886: s.vv. vampirii, velku; Vaillant 1931: 677,
679); cf. Slovene volkodlak, vu(l)kodlak (volk = 'wolf', dlaka = 'hair'), Bulgarian varkolak,
Serbo-Croat vukodlak, dialectally kudlak, Russian volko(d)lak, volkulak, dialectal volkolaka,
literary vurdalak [according to Vasmer (1964-73: s.v. vurdalak) Pushkin popularized this
distorted form in the 1820s-1830s; cf. his Marko Jakubovic, with its phrase zub vurdalaka,
and A. K. Tolstoy's early story La famille du vourdalak, published in English translation by
Kenneth Kemp in Perkowski 1976: 248-271], Ukrainian vovkulak(a), vovkun, Belarusian
vaukalak, Polish wilkolak, Czech vlkodlak, Slovak vlkolak, and also Romanian vircolac,
Albanian vurvollak, modern Greek v(o)ulkdlaka, vr(o)ukolakas, Lithuanian vilkakis, Latvian
vilkacis, vilkata. This creature, often identified with the vampire in popular tradition,
perhaps because of old (especially German) legends that the dead take the shape of a
wolf, is the equivalent of the English wer(e)wolf, German We(h)rwolf, etc.; cf. French loup
garou, Italian lupo mannaro, Portuguese lobisomem. The first element of the Germanic is
usually seen as Old English wer 'man' (= Latin vir), but the variants in war-lvar- cast some
doubt on this: Old English werewulf = (Middle) Dutch weerwulf, Middle High German
werwolf (Low German werwulf), West Frisian waerul, warule, Danish/Norwegian varulv
and Swedish varulf, perhaps representing Old Norse *varulf-r (found only as vargulf-r by
association with varg-r 'wolf'), whence Old Northern French garwall c. 1175, later

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 THE WORD VAMPIRE: ITS SLAVONIC FORM AND ORIGIN 255

The confusion of the xodjacij pokojnik and vampire is perhaps most

apparent in East and West Slav, both in names used and features attribu
ted. Xodjacie pokojniki, called in eastern Poland by such interchangeable
terms as upior, wypior, umrzyk, nieboszczyk, dusza zmarlego, strach, zly duch,
and zmora and in central and southern Polish regions upior, wqpierz, or
strzygon, are said to harm their own ("zmarla tesciowa w nocy wysysala
krew z dziewczyny" [the dead mother-in-law would suck blood from the
girl at night]), while the Kashubians tend to distinguish a vampire who
harms its own as v'esci ("zabiera tylko krewnych, wysysaj^c z nich krew"
[takes only kin, sucking the blood from them]) and one who harms others
as opi. It is no coincidence that a number of Slav words applied to the
vampire have an underlying implication of sorcery (see footnote 6). In
some parts of Kashubia, e.g., the Hel Peninsula, the words opi/upor are
unknown and only v'esc(i) is used (Sychta 1967- III: 332). Among East
Slavs the upyr' is above all a dead koldun, ved'mak or eretnik whose body is
animated by a devil (Vinogradova 2000: 31-32). Vinogradova cites an old
Polish source (Chmielowski 1754) that takes this same East Slav view of
vampires as possessed by an evil spirit, i.e., having a kind of dvoedusie, in
which a person's spirit quits the body after death but leaves behind a
demonic spirit that then animates the body.5 Despite any differences, both

guarou(l), garou(l), warou, wareu (OED 1971: s.v. werewolf). Moszyriski examines the
transfer of the Slavonic name for werewolf to vampire (Serbian vukodlak, for example, can
denote 'vampire'), which spread for example to Albanian and modern Greek (see also
Vinogradova 2000: 41-42). In Greece, where vampirism was prevalent, the word for a
vampire who resuscitates the dead and sends them out to feast on the living was
generally vrukolakas. This gave rise to the Old Church Slavonic variant vurkolaku and to
French brucolaque 'revenant, ghost'. It is debatable how much forms like Bulgarian
varkolak, Romanian vircolac, Albanian vurvollak and Russian vurdalak owe to purely
phonetic alternation of liquids (Ur), perhaps partly occasioned by taboo, and how much
to the influence of Germanic var-lwer- or even classical Greek words like brukd 'bite,
devour' and brukhd 'gnash the teeth'.
5 These demonic pokojniki have much in common with the mora or zmora of the South and
West Slavs (see Vinogradova 2000: 34-35); cf. Polish zmora 'ghost, nightmare' (= upior),
mora, mara, Kashubian muere, Czech mura 'moth, nightmare', moras, Upper Sorbian
murava, Lower Sorbian morava, Slovene mora 'nightmare, incubus', Serbo-Croat mora
'bloodsucking witch, nightmare', Macedonian mora, Bulgarian mora, morava. In Russia the
mora and kikimora play the role of household gods (Latin lares and penates); cf. Belarusian
dialect mara 'nightmare' (= Ukrainian mora 'nightmare, unclean spirit') as against mara
(= Ukrainian/Russian mara 'ghost', Russian dialect also 'household spirit'). Afanas'ev
(Perkowski 1976: 167) notes that Czechs call vampires and werewolves mory, mury,
morasi, murasi; cf. Wallachian murony, a term applied to vampires (Perkowski 1976: 163).
Romanian moroi = strigoi (see footnote 8). Popular etymology links the root with moriti
but it is in fact of Germanic/Celtic origin; cf. French cauchemar 'nightmare' (Old French
caucher = 'trample, press'), Morgane = Morgana or Morgan le Fay, the legendary British
king Arthur's sister, whose sorcery was believed to produce fata Morgana (Italian fata =

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256 BRIAN COOPER

East and West Slavs agree on the origin of vampires (dvoedusniki asso
ciated with evil forces, sinning greatly, dying unnaturally, especially
deprived of their due, e.g., unbaptized, unnamed, unconfessed). Similarly
the Balkan peoples conceived that an evil spirit could enter a dead person
during the first forty days after death (see Perkowski 1976: 162, 206).
Bulgarians believed that sinners became vampires because the devil that
had possessed them gave them no peace and enabled them to continue
their evil even after death (Vinogradova 2000: 32); yet for the South Slavs
"vampirization" could affect not only the traditional zaloznye pokojniki but
also those whose death and funeral did not include all required rites; con
ception, birth, or death occurred at an "evil" time (hence the South Slav
notion of the seasonality of some demons, like the varkolak); links to the
living were unbroken (e.g., by unexpiated wrongs); or life had been spent
in contact with necistaja sila.
The conception of the purity of the earth was very real to the Slav
religious consciousness, especially in connection with funeral rites. The
perception of death as marital union with the earth was reflected in apoc
ryphal literature and folklore, in which burial could be treated as the wed
ding night. Hence suicides and other (morally) unclean dead should not
be buried in the earth for fear of provoking an elemental catastrophe that
was seen as capable of disturbing the rest of ancestors sleeping in the
earth (cf. Vinogradova 2000: 36; this applied equally to newborn and
young children, see 2000: 35-37 and footnote 1). Manism was central to
the world view of the pagan Slavs. Of course, spirits of the dead (Latin
manes, hence "manism") were not only revered but also feared. It is no
coincidence that vampire is a word of Slav origin (see Encyclopaedia Britan
nica 1973-74, Macropaedia 16: 876); it originally referred to a dead person
who leaves the grave to threaten humans, as reflected in some of the other
Slav names for it, such as Polish martwiec and Serbo-Croat grobnik (or,
perhaps a corruption of it, gromlik).
The most ancient recorded form of the word vampire is upiri, attested
in Old Russian from the eleventh century (Miklosich 1862-65: 1059;

'fairy'), the mirage frequently seen in the Straits of Messina (Vaillant 1931: 679). Cognate
also is English nightmare, the second part of which is obsolete mare, a female spirit or
goblin supposed to beset people or animals at night, producing a feeling of suffocation
(OED 1971: s.w. mare 2, nightmare). The Common Germanic root is *maron-f*mardn-,
probably related to Irish morrigain 'queen of the spirits' (see Vasmer 1964-73: s.v. mara);
cf. Old English mare (fern.), Middle Low German mar (masc. + fern.), Middle Dutch mare,
maer (masc.), Old High German mara (fem.), Middle High German mar(e) (masc. + fem.),
modern German dialect Mahr (masc.; cf. Nachtmahr), Old Norse mara (fem.), Danish mare
(masc.), Swedish mara (masc. + fem.); cf. Russian kikimora (common gender), kiki- perhaps
representing Lithuanian kaukas 'goblin'.

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 THE WORD VAMPIRE'. ITS SLAVONIC FORM AND ORIGIN 257

Vaillant 1931: 673), first as a proper name {popu Upiri Lixyi in a manuscript
of 1047), then in the dative plural: (sloveni) klali trebu upiremu. Moszynski
(1934: 665) notes that this form occurs again in Russia as a name in 1495
(Makarenko Upiri) and 1600 (Klimu Upiru), as well as in toponyms. Clearly
a vampire cult existed in Russia, but doubtfully of the blood-drinking
kind." If upyr' is as old a word as it would seem, its origin would be
unlikely to have to do with bats and the drinking of blood. Forms dis
torted from the Russian occur in eastern Poland (e.g., lupirz, lupior, ivypior)
but around Lublin the form wqpierz is used, also seen in the name of a
meadow called Wqpierz in the Poznari region and (as variants of
Wqpiersk) in some town names of the lower Vistula basin: Wampertsch,
Wamperschke, Wampersch, Wampersk, all recorded in documents (the
first in 1411), and W^pielsk (heard as Wqpiersk in 1930), which was
Wqpielsko in the sixteenth century and near which a town called Strzyga
is attested in 1362 (Moszynski 1934: 665-666; see also footnote 8). Among
the Balkan Slavs the chief and original center of spread of the term closely
corresponding to Russian upir' and Polish wqpierz was Macedonia and
southwest Bulgaria (vapir, vampir, etc.) and it seems to have been from
Macedonia that the term reached the Serbs and Croats, among whom it
might not be universally known (Moszynski 1934: 666; Vaillant 1931: 673).
Vaillant (1931: 674), taking the Common Slavonic form as *upiri, sees
the acquisition of forms in va- (vii-) as a Slavonizing process which must
have happened in Serbian towards the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries,
when Old Church Slavonic in its Serbian recension had wide influence in
the Balkans, and he gives examples of va- corresponding to u- in the popu
lar language, e.g., vaskrs : uskrs 'resurrection', vazduh : uzduh 'air'. The
nasalization of vapir to vampir he sees as an instance of a well-attested
sporadic development; cf. dialectal dumbok for dubok 'deep', dumbrava for

6 Zelenin sees the blood-sucking sort of vampirism as alien to the Great Russians (see
Moszynski 1934: 664, where the Belarusians are included with them in this respect), and
Dal' (1912-14) is at pains to make this clear, labelling upyr' "southern" and noting (s.v.
vampir), after the gloss krovosos, upyr' [stress sic]: "the latter name is given in Little Russia
(and the South Slav lands) to a fairytale werewolf who flies as a bloodsucker after death,
gnawing people". It is interesting that Votjaks (Udmurts) who live adjacent to Russians
in the central Volga basin recognize the ubir as sucking the blood of the living
(Moszynski 1934: 665). Afanas'ev (translated by Perkowski 1976: 160) emphasizes that,
for the Slavs, especially the East Slavs, the vampire is closely related to the sorcerer
(vedun), witch (ved'ma), and werewolf (oboroten'). The spirits of dead sorcerers and
witches are said to be especially malicious. This association of sorcerers and vampires is
typical and explains such terms for vampire as Polish wieszczy, Kashubian and Slovincian
v'esci, v'esc, Slovene vedomec; cf. the remark by Dal' (1912-14: s.v. upyr'): "evil sorcerers
after death wander as vampires and, in order to still them, their graves are dug up and
their corpses pierced with an aspen stake".

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258 BRIAN COOPER

dubrava 'grove', prandid for pradjed 'great-grandfather, ancestor', tambor for

tabor 'camp', etc. (see Machek 1968: s.v. upir). For him, Bulgarian vapir
represents a Serbianism which was passed on to Ukraine, while Serbian
itself generalized the form vampir, passing it to Bulgaria (vampir-in),
northern Greece (vampiras alongside vompiras) and European languages.
He was possibly led into this almost certainly erroneous view because it
was indeed from Serbia that the word was passed to Europe in the form
vampir (first to Germany, then to France) after two cases of vampirism in
Serbia in 1725 and 1731 were widely reported in newspapers and com
mented upon by scholars (see Vaillant 1931: 675).7
In one respect, however, Vaillant was right about the forms in vathey
are almost certainly local variants of the original Common Slavonic, and
there seems no point in trying to link them with ancient Iranian vyambura
'hostile to water'; cf. Sanskrit arnbu 'water' (Vaillant 1931: 675; Korsch
1886: 676; Vasmer 1964-73: s.v. upyr' I). The earliest attempts at etymolo
gizing the word (e.g., Miklosich 1886: s.v. vampiru) focused on a possible
Turkic origin. Vaillant (1931: 676-677), relying on studies by Deny, identi
fies the following as most relevant: 1. northern Turkic (Kazan' and Bashkir
dialect) ubyr 'sorcerer, sorceress'; 2. Chuvash wubur 'demon devouring the
moon or sun', Karachai (in the Caucasus) obur 'demon devouring the
newborn', Osmanli Turkish obur 'glutton'; 3. Uighur opur, obur 'child
minder, (wet) nurse'. Attempts to link all of these to a common root
op-lup- 'suck, breathe' underlying the Slavonic vampire word he rightly
dismisses as attaching too much importance to secondary associations of
vampirism that in the Slav world are recent and artificial. Although op-/
up- may work for 3, the forms in 2 are more reminiscent of Persian obar,
awbar 'ravisher' (awburden = 'ravish'), used to designate various monsters
that eat humans, stars, etc., while ubyr in 1, the form usually cited as an
etymon for the Slavonic, could only really explain dialectal Russian obyr'
(see below). It seems more likely to Vaillant (1931: 677) that Turkic took
forms 2 from Persian and form 1 from Slavonic.
Vaillant himself (1931: 678) favors a link with the verb upirat'sja 'be
stubborn', citing dialectal Russian upyr' in the sense 'stubborn person' (in

7 Farson (2000:110) gives a typical "case history" from Belgrade in 1732, and also several
recorded by Calmet (2000: 111-114). Adelung (1811: s.v. vampyr) asserts that the word
became chiefly known in Germany in 1732 when vampires caused a considerable stir in
the kingdom of Serbia under the haiduks. Calmet notes (Perkowski 1976: 92) that in the
part of Hungary east of the river "Tibiscus, vulgarly called the Teyss" [= Tisza], between
Tokay and the frontiers of Transylvania, the people named Heydukes [= Hungarian
hajdu, plural hajd.uk] believed in vampires.

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 THE WORD VAMPIRE: ITS SLAVONIC FORM AND ORIGIN 259

Niznij Novgorod and Kostroma dialect according to Dal') and justifyin

this form of derivation from the verb by instancing as models for upiri Old
Church Slavonic usidi 'fugitive' and Common Slavonic *notopin 'ba
moth', both masculine deverbal nouns in -i (the latter with the verbal root
*per- 'fly' in the same long grade as the former's sid- > sid-). The sourc
verb would be pereti 'flee, fly away, throw onself forward' (cognate wi
pariti 'soar'), allowing interpretation of upir' as 'one who escapes/make
off (e.g., flying)', i.e., a dead person escaping from the grave (= parjasc
dux). However, it must be said that Vasmer is right to treat dialectal upyr'
as a separate derivative under the influence of upirat'sja (1964-73: s.v.
upyr' II); cf. Kashubian upor, genitive upora, which can mean both 'vam
pire' and 'stubborn person', the latter sense arising because popular et
mology takes upor to denote a person co sp upar [= co sip upari < upierac si
'be stubborn, persist', see Sychta 1967- VI: 24], and Belarusian dialect
vupar 'vampire', which may have arisen by an analogous contaminatio
between upyr 'vampire' and uparty 'stubborn', upiracca/uparcicca 'be stu
born' (= Russian upirat'sja/uprjamit'sja, see Martynov 1978-: s.v. vupar).
Bruckner justifiably takes issue with Vaillant over this etymology
(1934: 278-279), starting from what he sees as a wrong etymology for
*notopiri (Russian netopyr', Polish nietoperz); for him it is not *nokto-pyn
'night flier', as Miklosich also thought (1886: s.v. netopyri), but rathe
*ne-to-pyr' 'no bird', parallel to Polish nie-to-ta 'Lycopodium, club moss'. H
even seems to see Serbian lepir 'butterfly', otherwise leptir, as possibly
from (je)le-pir 'hardly a bird, half a bird' by analogy with netopyr' (193
280), although it may be from lepetati 'flutter'. In a similar way, therefore
he takes the u- of upiri to be privative, as in u-rod, not as meaning 'away'
like Vaillant. Believing that Vaillant was led astray by taking Serbia as
starting point, he argues (1934: 280; 1957: 594) that the Bulgarians orig
nally gave the name upir' or *(v)gpir' to the strigae or striges of the ancient
which he identifies as bats sucking the blood of infants (both u- and
being privative, as in ubogu [= bez bog(atstva)] 'poor' and produ [= jurodivyj
'born foolish', so that upir' becomes another and rather analogous word
for a kind of netopyr'). This Slavonic name was then loaned to the Greeks,
like the Slavonic word for werewolf (structures of superstitions constantly
blend into each other), only to be borrowed back in its northern Greek
form vdmpiras : vompiras by the Bulgarians and Serbs, while the form upi
was passed to the Ukrainians and thence to the Russians, Poles, an
Czechs. The exchange of superstitions between the Bulgarians (not Serb
and Greeks was constant, as exemplified by the lamiae, who suck the blood
of children (Greek lamia, Bulgarian lamja, unknown in Serbian). Althoug
the ancients had such blood-drinking demons, the modern concept of th

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260 BRIAN COOPER

vampire was unknown to them (corpses were usually burnt). Bruckner

concludes that, though the nam- of the present-day vampire is modern
Greek, the word itself was originally Bulgarian for strigae, which were first
transformed in some superstitions from bats to vampires and later con
fused with werewolves.8
Interesting as this etymology may be, it seems to lean more heavily on
preconceptions of vampirism than on the Slavonic word itself and its
likely associations. (The strix, for example, was not a bat but a barn-owl or
screech-owl, so called from its discordant cry, thought to be of evil omen.
There are, after all, no blood-eating bats in the Old World, all three being
New World species, and the connection of bats with vampires has next to
no basis in folklore.) This is the same weakness for which Vaillant (1931:
677) rightly accused the Czech Slovntk naucny of being too much influ
enced in its etymology by the Romantic notion of vampirism, with its
blood-drinking aspects, in deriving up'ir from vpit(i) se (Russian vpivat'sja)
'sink one's teeth into' (*vu-pi- 'drink in'). A very similar approach was
taken by scholars of his day mentioned by Afanas'ev (Perkowski 1976:

8 The "living, mischievous and murderous" dead body is confused with the live person
who drinks others' blood (Farson 1975: 110); the vampire becomes confused with other
creatures of folklore, such as strigae and werewolves (see footnote 4), resulting in or at
least reinforcing the familiar blood-sucking images of vampirism. In Latin, a woman
bringing harm to children, a hag or witch, was called striga (cf. Italian Strega in the same
sense), a word evidently derived from strix (genitive strigis) = Greek strix, strigx (= strinx
from (s)trizd 'screech') 'screech-owl', which according to the ancients sucked the blood of
young children; cf. Isaiah 34:14, where the prophet, describing the state to which Edom
shall be reduced, says that it shall become the habitation of satyrs and Lilith, which in
Hebrew meant the same as the Romans expressed by strix and lamia — she was queen of
the night, flying like a night owl to attack those who slept alone and to devour newborn
infants (see Perkowski 1976: 102); early translations of the Bible used lamia where the
Authorized (King James) Version has screech owl (shrichowle). Latin lamia, a witch who
was supposed to suck children's blood, was derived from Greek lamia, a fabulous
monster with the body of a woman who preyed on human beings and sucked the blood
of children; cf. modern Greek lamia 'ogress, witch', lamia 'hobgoblin'. Blood sucking was
clearly familiar to the Romans, so it is perhaps not surprising that Balkan Latin *strig
should result in such reflexes as Romanian strigoi 'wizard/sorcerer, vampire' and Sla
vonic borrowings (in the west and southwest of the Slav world, not reflected in East
Slavonic), such as Slovene strigon, Istrian strigonj, Slovak strigon, striguh, and Polish
strzygon (also strzyz, strzyg), a kind of male lamia, the soul of a male bastard child prema
turely dead. Slovak also has the feminine forms striga, strigona, strigaha. Polish strzyga
iamia, vampire' is stated by Bruckner (1957: s.v. strzyga) to have been borrowed from
Latin in the early Middle Ages. Miklosich sees it as borrowed from the Romanian (1886:
s.v. striga), in which language it occurs in this extract from Dracula (Stoker 1965: 261): "In
the records are such words as 'stregoica' — witch, 'ordog' and 'pokol' — Satan and hell;
and in one manuscript this very Dracula is spoken of as a 'wampyr'". Ordog and pokol are
Hungarian words for 'devil' and 'hell', respectively, and stregoica is presumably
Romanian strigoaica (= strigoi) 'ghost, witch'.

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 THE WORD VAMPIRE: ITS SLAVONIC FORM AND ORIGIN 261

164), who linked vampire with Lithuanian vempti 'drink' (or vampyti
'grumble, bark, yelp') or with the root *poi- : *pi- 'drink', so that the vam
pire became a drinker (opojca) of blood, like a leech; cf. Bulgarian kravnik as
applied to the vampire. Afanas'ev might at first seem to support this
approach, hastening to point out that one name the Slovenes have for a
vampire is pijavica, that the Serbs call someone whose face is red from
drink "red as a vampire" [erven kao vampir], that Serbs and Slovaks call an
inveterate drunkard vulkodlak, vlkolak, and that this characteristic attribute
of the vampire gives it an affinity with the Russian fairytale giant Opivala,
otherwise Opivalo, who can easily empty 40 barrels of wine and drink a
lake dry (see Brockhaus and Efron 1890-: s.v. Opalo). However, he does
stress the fundamentals (Perkowski 1976: 165, and see also 1976: 24-25).
Russians believe that a vampire does not decay after death, mat' syra
zemlja 'moist mother earth' does not accept him and he leaves his grave at
night to wander near his former abode and appear to relatives and
neighbors. He is thus known as a polunocnik; cf. the characteristic Russian
sayings v polnoc necistyj po zemle proselsja 'at midnight the devil stalked
the earth' and o polunoci mertvecy xodjat 'around midnight dead bodies
walk' (Dal' 1912-14: s.v. polunocnik).
Vaillant opposed the approach of taking the Slavonic word apart and
trying to identify roots, because this seemed to him to result in mere
arbitrariness (1931: 677), but most etymologies suggested for it do in fact
rely on this approach. The word's precise origin is thus much disputed
(see Vasmer 1964-73: s.vv. upyr' I, vampir), though it is widely thought to
have appeared first of all in South Slavonic. Cernyx (1994: s.v. vampir)
adduces an Old Church Slavonic/Old Bulgarian *vgpyn, following
Mladenov's proto-Slavonic *ompyr- and Old Bulgarian *vgpyri (1941: s.v.
vampir), while others cite *vgpir- (e.g., Bielfeldt 1965: 20). Both these *vp
forms are unrecorded but reconstructed on the basis of modern Bulgarian
and thought to have been borrowed into Greek, e.g., as vampuros, modern
Latin vampyrus, before being borrowed back into Bulgarian and Serbian
(Georgiev et al. 1971-: s.v. vampir). Certainly the first vowel must have
been a nasal (Korsch 1886: 676), which rules out any borrowing from
Turkic, e.g., Kazan' Tatar ubyr 'mythical being', ubyr karcyk 'witch', pace
Miklosich (1886: s.v. vampiru), Gorjaev (1896: s.v. upyr'), Preobrazenskij
(1958: s.v. vampir), and various others, but if the proto-Slavonic *p- repre
sents a negative prefix (perhaps Indo-European *n-, an ablaut variant of
*ne-, seen also in German un-; cf. Old Church Slavonic grodu 'fool', Rus
sian urod 'freak'), what is negated? Is a vampire 'not a bird' (*g-piru, with
*pirii = *per- 'fly'; cf. pero 'feather', parit' 'soar'), as suggested by Skok
(1971-74: s.v. vampir) and Holub and Kopecny (1952: s.v. upir), or perhaps

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262 BRIAN COOPER

rather more likely 'not consumed by fire' (*pur- 'fire', as in Sanskrit pu,
Greek pur, Common Germanic *fuir-; cf. Serbo-Croat puriti 'scorch', Czech
pyrit sa 'blush'), as stated by Gluhak (1993: s.v. vampir)? In the latter case
there would be a ready Greek parallel to vampuros in apuros 'without fire'.
Machek seems prepared to accept the root *per-, but prefers the prefix *vu
(*vu-peru, a deverbal from v-periti se, with u- coming from vii- rather than
the other way round; cf. Slovak perit' sa 'fledge'; see Machek 1968: s.v.
upir). The same prefix might figure in folk etymologies such as vu pokoe
[gde lezit pokojnik, this being doubly unlikely on phonetic and semantic
grounds: it is precisely in the grave that vampires do not find peace] and
vu-pyrjati [zuby v telo, open to the same objection as vpivat'sja]. Moszyriski,
on the other hand, links the word with Serbo-Croat piriti, pirkati 'blow',
napiriti 'inflate' (1934: 622, note 2), surmising that it means 'swollen',
parallel to *g-tuk-u, Polish wqtek, Russian utok 'weft, woof' < tuk-ati.
Vampires were often said to have a body swollen with blood. Interest
ingly, Adelung (1811: s.v. vampyr) takes a similar view of the German
word, which he rightly thinks must originate in Serbian or a related
language, but which he believes to be cognate with Upper German dialect
words like Wamme, Wampe 'paunch', mentioning "the Du Foesne Lex. med.
et inf. Graecitatis, where the Bulcolaccae [see footnote 4] and Tympanitae
are named because after their death they are said to swell up like a drum";
cf. Old High German wampa and the apparently related Slovene vamp,
lamp 'paunch' = Croat vamp, famp, dialectal Polish zvqp (also wq(t)pie),
genitive wqpia (Skok 1971-74: s.v. vampir, Miklosich 1886: s.v. vampu).
The problem with so many proposed etymologies of the Slavonic word
is that the wider trappings of vampirism have caused sight of the word
and its Slavonic essentials to be lost in a forest of trees for which one
cannot see the wood, a danger that was stressed right from the start of this
study. Some of the suggestions made as a result, especially by scholars of
an earlier time, have verged on the bizarre. Take, for example, Haren
berg's view (cited by Hock 1900: 55) that vatn- came from Greek haima
'blood', with the rough breathing altered into v- as in hespera 'evening'
alongside Latin vespera, and -pir from piren 'desirous of striving for some
thing'! What, then, is essential about vampires? What is their essence? The
answer lies in the fundamental reason why people become vampires in
the first place: because they are somehow impure. An origin not hitherto
apparently proposed, which would seem to avoid the risk of obscuring
the essence of the Slavonic word, might involve the Latin of descendants
of Trajan's Roman colonists in Dacia, the precursors of the Romanians.
(After all, the Roman abandonment of Dacia in AD 271 was never com
plete, since the mass of peasantry stayed, ensuring the persistence of a

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 THE WORD VAMPIRE: ITS SLAVONIC FORM AND ORIGIN 263

Latin language and people in the country that Trajan conquered during
AD 105-107; see Rosetti 1938- II: 44.) The Slavs may be assumed to have
referred to anyone among the "undead", i.e., unclean dead who do not
decompose in the grave (those whom the Russians later called zaloznye) as
*necistu. This term is, after all, still widely used in Slavonic languages
today for evil forces; cf. Russian necist' 'evil spirits', necistyi (dux) 'devil'
(= Serbo-Croat necist (duh), Polish nieczysty (duch)), Bulgarian and Serbo
Croat necista sila 'evil spirit, devil'. It may be that speakers of Dacian Latin,
coming in contact with Slavs from their ancestral homeland north of the
Carpathians (while they were still linguistically united, even if after they
had struck out in conquest of central and southeast Europe in the sixth
century) and becoming familiar with their beliefs, were led to apply to the
undead the equivalent term in their own language: a form of impurus
'unclean' (perhaps *empuru, since final -s was lost in vulgar Latin, and un
accented f sounded as closed e; see Rosetti 1938- I: 56). Latin was adopted
as a sort of lingua franca over a wide area (Rosetti 1938- II: 49), and
certainly some Latin words seem to have entered proto-Slavonic without
any Germanic mediation, such as poganu 'peasant' < paganus 'rural,
villager' (Comrie and Corbett 2002: 110). If the first syllable of *empuru
was pronounced with a distinct front vowel, as might be supposed, given
that Romanian now has impur, then a Slavonic borrowing of the word for
specific application to the undead would be expected to have initial
with prothesis leading to j$- (> ja- in Russian, for example, after the loss of
nasals). Yet classical Latin in- has two outcomes in Romanian, in- (as in
negatives) and in-. Rosetti (1973: 80) states that "a l'initiale, l'archi
phoneme N est realise comme n ou a (ulterieurement i) nasal dans des
mots comme imparat [= 'emperor']". If the vowel in the first syllable of
*empuru was perceived by the Slavs as more central (*ampuru), nearer to
current Romanian im- (or Russian y-, Turkish i-), as in a se impurpura
'blush', it might then have resulted in the reflex p-, with labialization
leading also (or perhaps later) to vp-r giving *Qpyru*/ppiru : *vgpyru/*vppiru,
analogous to the Old Church Slavonic necistu (cf. Mladenov's Old Bul
garian reconstruction *vppyrT). This would result, after loss of the nasals,
in Old Russian upir', Russian upyr' and Ukrainian upyr, dialectally opyr
(genitive upyrja, opyrja). Dialectal Russian obyr', if it is not connected with
this latter Ukrainian variant, may have been borrowed from or influenced
by a Turkic language; cf. northern Turkic (Kazan' Tatar) ubyr 'sorcerer,
sorceress', Turkish and Crimean Tatar obur, Kazakh obyr 'glutton(ous),
insatiable' (Crimean Tatar obur also = 'witch'). It is significant that, in
Medieval Latin, impura was used as a noun meaning 'witch' (Habel 1931:
s.v. impura), and that in Romanian "a and i, representing a sound very like

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264 BRIAN COOPER

that of Russian y, when followed by m or n frequently correspond to the

Old Bulgarian nasals" (Entwistle and Morison 1964: 396), as demonstrated
by Rosetti (1938- VI: 49-50), e.g., Dambova, from Slavonic Dub- < Dgb-.
The second part of Latin im-puru(s) (or *em-puru) would naturally give
-pyru in Slavonic, and indeed some variants of the Slavonic vampire word
do have unpalatalized -r, as for instance Czech upir. The palatalization
seen in standard Russian upyr' may be due to analogy with words such as
netopyr' 'bat'. Moreover, -yr' is a not uncommon suffix in Russian. The
fact that some Slavonic languages have -pir rather than -pyr (cf. Czech
and Slovak upir, Belarusian upir, and indeed the no longer current Russian
variant upir') may be an effect of taboo, perhaps resulting from a
transposition or metathesis of the two vowels in the original Latin word
{impur- > *umpir-); in fact, such a transposition might help explain how
Latin im- could have resulted in Slavonic g- in the first place {-pyr' might
then be the aberration, perhaps by analogy as suggested above). In any
event, one can hardly be surprised that so tabooed a word should show
the characteristic deformations that often lead to changes not only in
vowels but also in consonants; cf. the dialectal variants beginning with
such as Bulgarian Ijapir, Serbian lampi(je)r, eastern Polish lupirz. Like the
last, Polish upior (dialect wypior, earlier also upir, Old Polish upierz) seems
to be a loan from East Slavonic, to judge by the initial u-, though wypior
may have been altered by popular etymology from *wqpir or *wqpior,
representing an earlier wqpierz. Belief in revenants was general but they
were too feared to be called openly by name, hence such designations as
Slovene strah, Polish strach, Czech strasidlo 'fright, ghost'; cf. dialectal
French Peurs (Vaillant 1931: 678) and the pagan god Peur.
After the break-up of the Common Slavonic homeland, Slavs spread
ing south from beyond the Carpathians to settle finally in the Balkans may
have developed a labialized (*vp-) doublet of the original * gpyrul* gpiru or
* gpyri/* gpiri, in which the ruin and y/i variation should not be seen as
unexpected; Georgiev et al. (1971-) stress that the variation in form, which
is often not in accord with correct phonetic development, may be
attributed to taboo (1:117, s.v. vampir). This might well account also for the
unusual variants in Kashubian; alongside the more expected upor (pre
sumably from Ukrainian, like Polish upior), the adjectival forms like upi/opi
could have been partly influenced by the other common Kashubian word
for vampire, vesci, with genitive v'escego, while nelap could be an attempt to
stress the non-existence or non-utterance of the tabooed lexical item (for
fear of making it appear). If both the p- and vp- forms of *(v)gpyr-l*(v)gpir
were Common Slavonic developments, the Balkan Slavs preferred the
form with prothetic v-, which seems by and large to have ousted the

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 THE WORD VAMPIRE: ITS SLAVONIC FORM AND ORIGIN 265

unlabialized form. If not Common Slavonic, the prothetic form probably

originated among the Bulgarians or Macedonians and spread with its
nasal vowel to some other Balkan peoples, including those with no true
nasalization, such as northern Greece (giving vdmpiras : vdmpiras). It is
significant that in the Macedo-Romanian (Aromanian) dialects of Roma
nian the vampire word takes the form vompir and vombir instead of the
standard Daco-Romanian vampir (see Dalametra 1906; Pascu 1925; Papa
hagi 1963). Clearly at some stage the word originally borrowed from
Dacian Latin was borrowed back in its Slavonic guise into Balkan Latin.
This interborrowing within the Balkan Sprachbund is also apparent in the
Serbian form vampir, presumably borrowed from Greek (perhaps by way
of Bulgarian vampir) and eventually replacing an earlier upir inferred from
Palmotic's genitive plural upirina (see paragraph 2), although the exact
date of borrowing is debatable. Certainly Georgiev et al. (1971-: s.v.
vampir) argue that the unrecorded Old Bulgarian *vgpirii was borrowed
into Greek as vatnpuros (modern Greek vampir), which was borrowed back
into Bulgarian and Serbo-Croat. At all events the *vgpir- form, assuming
that it was not Common Slavonic, passed eventually to the Ukraine,
though evidently after the loss of nasals (cf. Ukrainian vopyr, vepyr as
against Bulgarian vapir, vapir, vepir, Old Macedonian/Bulgarian *vgpyri), to
complement the existing form in u- from earlier g- (upyr, opyr). The dena
salized form seen in Bulgarian vapir (va- < vg-) would suggest that a nasal
form was the original, as would the older Serbo-Croat form upir (u- < g-).
The Bulgarian variants vapir and vepir(in) are presumably corrupted forms
of vampir(in), though vapir could perhaps be referred directly to *vg-.
From the Serbs the form in vam- was eventually borrowed much later,
in the eighteenth century, by West Europeans, first by the Germans
(Vampyr, later spelled Vampir, came to Leipzig in a report from Vienna on
events in Belgrade in 1725; see Kluge 1995: s.v. Vampir) and then from
them by the French, among whom vampire was first recorded in 1746
when Dom Augustin Calmet published his Dissertation sur les revenants en
corps, les excommuniqu.es, les oupires ou vampires, brucolaques, the first com
prehensive study on Slavonic vampires, although the word can also be
found in Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique. By 1770 Voltaire was already
using the word in a figurative sense (Dauzat et al. 1971: s.v. vampire); cf.
"les vrais Vampires sont les moines" (quoted in Hock 1900: 57). Calmet
evidently borrowed the word vampire from German in 1746.9 The polemic

9
The French borrowing from German could have been a little earlier if English vampire
(first recorded in 1734 according to the OED) was borrowed from French, which is quite
possible (see Rey 1992: s.v. vampire). Hock points out (1900: 55) that the equivalent

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266 BRIAN COOPER

of Voltaire and Dom Calmet helped the form vampire to triumph in

France, even though there is occasional later evidence of oupire (1751) and
upire (1771), borrowed from Czech or Russian (see Rey 1992: s.v. vampire).
Then G. L. Leclerc, comte de Buffon, in volume 10 of his Histoire naturelle,
generale et particuliere (Paris, 1762), gave the name le vampire to a large
South American bat which took blood from animals and sleeping humans
(see Hock 1900: 58), and German Romanticism soon took up the word.
Thus began the association, virtually unknown in folklore, between vam
pires and bats. In this vam- form the word was borrowed back by all the
Slav countries which did not have it, as well as by many other countries;
cf. Lithuanian vampyras, Latvian vampirs, Turkish vampir, etc.
It is not surprising that the name *ppir- spread very quickly and very
wide; as Moszyriski points out (1934: 622, note 2), the names of creatures
of the imagination are wont to. If it was borrowed by the South Slavs, it
must have left the Balkans very early, since we have evidence of it in
Great Russia in the eleventh century. T. P. Vukanovic in his work Vampire
(see Perkowski 1976: 201) stresses the migratory tendency of many in the
Balkans, especially the Gypsies, who readily picked up the beliefs of the
Balkan peoples, including belief in vampires, and helped to diffuse it with
their incessant wanderings. Yet, as reflexes of another Balkan Latin bor
rowing, *strig-, are not found in East Slavonic (see footnote 8), *(v)gpir~
may very well have been a genuinely Common Slavonic loanword, at
least in its unlabialized, if not perhaps also in its labialized, form. The
spelling with initial vam- is clearly the result of the borrowing back from
Greek of (South) Slavonic *vppyr-/*vppir- as vampir- by Slavs in the Bal
kans, notably Bulgarians and Serbs, and its subsequent spread, not only to
speakers of non-Slavonic languages in the area; cf. Romanian and Alba
nian vampir, Hungarian vampir,10 but also to other Slavs; cf. Russian,

"Polish expression Upior [sic], Upierzyca" first came to the attention of the educated
German public in 1721 through Rzazyriski's Historia natur. curios, regni Poloniae.
10The OED (1971: s.v. vampire) sees the vam- spelling as an adaptation of Hungarian
vampir, but this appears to be recorded only from the eighteenth century and is thought
to derive from Serbo-Croat (Magyar nyelv torteneti-etimologiai szotara 1967-: s.v. vampir). I
is interesting that, while Hungarian vam- is pronounced with the long -a- of 'father' [a:],
its variant vam- has a short -a- resembling the -o- in 'dog', so that vam- sounds more like
vom-, thus quite closely rendering the Slavonic *vp- (cf. Aromanian vom-). In fact the
vocalism in Hungarian appears not to have been consistent: vampir 1786, vampir 1794,
vampir, vampir 1799 (ibid.). It is also worth noting the Albanian form dhampir (see Skok
1971-74: s.v. vampir). In Vukanovic's Vampire (Perkowski 1976: 217) it is reported that
Gypsies in Novopazarski Sandzak believe a vampire can come to his wife at night an
procreate a child (vampiric, vampijerovic, lampijerovic), who by the Orthodox is called
Vampir if a boy, Vampiresa if a girl, and by Moslems Dhampir and Dhampiresa
respectively. A vampire's son, known to all ethnic groups in the Kosovo-Metohija region

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 THE WORD VAMPIRE: ITS SLAVONIC FORM AND ORIGIN 267

Ukrainian and Belarusian vampir, Czech vampyr and Polish ivampir. It may
seem more likely that this spread occurred after the vam- variant entered
the languages of western Europe, in that Sobolevskij's 1911 suggestion,
repeated by Vasmer (1964—73: s.v. upyr' II) and noted by Bielfeldt (1965
20), that German Vampir came from a West Slav language with preserved
nasal vowels, such as Polabian or Old Polish, would only be tenable if the
*vp- form had been genuinely Common Slavonic, though the existence of
Polish wqpierz and the toponym W^pielsk/W^piersk add weight to this
thesis (but not so up'i, op'i, because the phonemes /o/ and /u/ in Kashubian
have acquired a prothetic labial on-glide anyway). The extent to which th
vam- form, e.g., in Russian (in which it is first recorded from the eigh
teenth century, as in Semen Porosin's Zapiski, sluzascie k istorii...Pavla
Petrovica 1764-66, see Sanskij 1963-: s.v. vampir), is a later borrowing from
western Europe, as has been argued (Vasmer 1964-73, Preobrazenski
1958: s.v. vampir), remains to be elucidated (Cernyx 1994: s.v. vampir). At
any event, if the etymology proposed here is valid, it may not be entirely
out of place that, of all the members of the Balkan Sprachbund, it should
be from ancestors of the Romanians, whose dracul 'the devil' (Russian
necistyj) looms large in modern vulgarizations of the vampire superstition
in fiction and film, that the Slavs borrowed *(v)g-pyr/pir- (< impur
[*empur-], as *impur-/*umpir-7) before passing it as vampire to western
Europe and the wider world.

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21 Redgate Road Received: September 2002

Girton Revised: January 2003
Cambridge CB3 OPP
United Kingdom
[email protected]

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