Thus we have the term vampir in a convincing etymological route – not the only possible one, but certainly a serious contender.

The Vampir meets the Vukudlok

But what of the confusion between vampir and vukodlak? And for that matter, what about nosferatu?

Nosferatu should, one would think, be easy enough to identify – but its origin is surprisingly not straightforward at all. The term was first used in fiction by Bram Stoker, but its first appearance in any source is in an essay entitled “Transylvanian Superstitions”, published in 1885 in the work “The Nineteenth Century” (pp 128-144). This essay was written by Emily Gerard, the Scottish wife of an Austro-Hungarian officer, and the relevant passage is: “There are two sorts of vampires - living and dead. The living vampire is, in general, the illegitimate offspring of two illegitimate persons, but even a flawless pedigree will not ensure anyone against the intrusion of a vampire into his family vault, since every person killed by a nosferatu becomes likewise a vampire after death, and will continue to suck the blood of other innocent people till the spirit has been exorcised...”

This essay is known to have been read and influenced Bram Stoker in his writing of “Dracula”. Clearly, in this reference, the term nosferatu appears to be cognate with vampire - according to Mrs Gerard, that is.

Emily Gerard published her travel book The Land Beyond The Forest three years later in 1888, and expanded upon the term. “More decidedly evil is the nosferatu, or vampire, in which every Roumanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell. There are two sorts of vampires, living and dead. The living vampire is generally the illegitimate offspring of two illegitimate persons; but even a flawless pedigree will not insure any one against the intrusion of a vampire into their family vault, since every person killed by a nosferatu becomes likewise a vampire after death, and will continue to suck the blood of other innocent persons till the spirit has been exorcised...” Beyond question, Emily Gerard was presenting this hitherto unknown term nosferatu as being interchangeable with vampire. But it's worth noting that, according to Agnes Murgoci in her article “The Vampire in Romania”, the most common term for the vampire in Romanian is strigoi (strigoica for the feminine), with moroii, vârcolaci and pricolici used less frequently for the same meaning. This is confirmed by the terms used in vampire texts gathered by Professor Petrovici from all over Romania in the 1930s.

According to Leonard Wolf (quoted also by Perkowski in “The Darkling”, nosferatu is older Romanian for the Devil.¹¹ This, we can understand, is to suppose that the term is a misreading by Emily Gerard (the source for the term) of Romanian necuratul (which is the nominative masculine definite noun formed from the adjective necurat - meaning unclean, related to the occult). The noun thus formed would indeed mean the devil. This may be well be the explanation for Emily Gerard's use of a nonexistent word, particularly as she did not speak or read Romanian to any high degree - an error in transcription is the only explanation for the sudden appearance of this word without any prior appearance in the Romanian language itself!

An an alternative etymology, there has been suggestion that it derives from nosophoros (νοσοφορος), Greek for disease-bearing. While Greek influence in words used in Transylvania is not unknown (although it is minor), the etymological pathway to derive nosferatu into Romanian from the Greek is not consisted with observed phonological changes of such loanwords. Moreover, the speculative word nosophoros is a proposed compound in Greek, not an observed word. Thus this explanation is almost certainly folk etymology, a popular misconception based upon etymologically unsound assumptions deriving from coincidentally similar-sounding or -looking words rather than a properly understood and well-researched etymological path.

But the vampir/vukodlak question is even trickier, not least because many writers who certainly purport to be scholars in this field are themselves confused by the terminology! It’s not surprising – the various Slavic cultures use vukodlak in different ways.

Friedrich Krausse was a researcher into the Bosnian vampire in the early 20th century, and he reported that among the Bosnian Serbs “vukodlak is used less frequently than among the Slovenes and Croats. The Bulgarians say vampir and more frequently vapir, vepir, vupir. The Serbs say vampir, lampir, upir, and upirina… In Dalmatia in and around Split the obscure term kozlak is more usual than vukodlak or vampir… Even one of the most recent Slavic mythologists… lists ‘vlukodlaku’ under vampire, or more exactly, he calls the vampire a vukodlak. This is totally wrong…”¹²

In stark contradiction is this entry from the Serbian Mythological Dictionary. “A vukodlak is in essence the same as a vampir. From vampir descriptions it is evident that it can appear in various forms, especially in the form of certain animals such as a wolf, dog, cat, donkey, horse, etc. According to some descriptions the vukodlak appears in human form just like the vampir except that its whole body is thickly covered with hair (dlaka). According to some authors this would have to be the main difference between a vampir and a vukodlak. However, the vampir was originally thought to be in the form of a wolf…”¹³

According to the Macedonians, “the vъrkolak is also a type of vampire (vъper) which differs only by the fact that it has arisen from the blood of people killed with a rifle or knife somewhere beyond the village… The vъrkolak remains in the spot where the man was killed and there cries out, jabbers, and raises a big ruckus at night. He shouts out the names of people known to him and he also reveals the names of his murderers.”¹⁴

According to Bulgarian reports, “a bandit, an arsonist, or an extortionist, when he perishes in the mountains, the forests, the thickets, or crossroads and highways and rots or when eagles, crows, wolves and other wild animals devour his corpse, becomes a vъrkolak, a wicked and vengeful evil spirit, as it was when alive… Whomever he meets or whoever goes near the place where he was killed or where he lives the vъrkolak attacks, strangles and drinks his blood…”¹⁵