Review: Notes on the Origin of the Word "Vampire" Author(s): Malcolm Burr Source: The Slavonic and East

European Review, Vol. 28, No. 70 (Nov., 1949), pp. 306-307 Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4204131 Accessed: 06/07/2010 07:43
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306 NOTES ON

THE THE

SLAVONIC ORIGIN OF

REVIEW. THE WORD "VAMPIRE"

to Skeat vampire is the only word in English derived from According This is not accurate, for we have waywode, hospodar and the Serbian. perhaps others, and vampir is not in origin a Slavonic word. that it is of Slavonic origin, quoting several The O.E.D. maintains such forms as variants in the different Slavonic languages, including have been influenced Ruthenian by vepar, a boar may vepyr?which more or less closely resembling the original vampir. (Polish wieprz)?all Miklosich suggests the North Turkish uber, a witch, but this we can dismiss The word is not given by Hony, nor is it known to as a mere guess. The boot is on the other leg, educated Turk whom I have asked. any for uber must simply be a loan-word by the northern Turks from the The Concise Oxford already corrupt Russian form upir (Polish upior). gives also the Magyar form as vampir, but this is borrowed Dictionary words. directly from the Serbian, like so many other Hungarian " But the word cannot be traced to any Slavonic root, nor does it ring Slavonic." Whence, then, did the Serbs derive it ? The clue is given by yet another Slavonic dialect form which the O.E.D. does not give, the Bosnian lampir, recorded by Miss Durham (Some Tribal Origins, Laws and Customs of the Balkans). The change from / to v offers no difficulty in the Slavonic languages : for instance, the Russian byl and byv-shi, Serbian bila, bilo and biva, bivo. Further, in Serbian I and o are interchangeable, as in such forms as of the Polish guttural talac, taoac, and the Serbian -o is the equivalent like the English w. I, which is pronounced the problem from a different angle, we find that the Approaching second clue is entomological. When the South Slavs came down into In central the Balkans, for the first time they saw flying glow-worms. Europe they had known only the common glow-worm, Lampyris noctiluca. The difference is important. With the central European species it is the female that shows the light but, as she is wingless, she sits on the grass motionless. In the southern and species (L. nervosa, L. maculicollis L. tenenbaumi) it is the winged male that shows the light, and he flies about. Now even those accustomed to the fairylike scene in its strangeness and beauty are impressed by it, as'these tiny lanterns entwine their silent, To the primitive Slavs, packed unending mazes on still dark nights. with superstition, the impression must have been terrifying. To them it meant some form of devil. We have a record of an actual case, with another Slavonic people. When the Russian settlers first reached the Pacific coast of Eastern Siberia and for the first time saw this magic scene, they were terrified, fired their rifles at it and bolted, screaming that the devil was after them. The scene is vividly described in Dersu the Trapper, by Arseniev. I submit, therefore, that the same thing happened in the Balkans.

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and unfamiliar phenomenon, they Having no word for this startling to borrowed the Greek word, lampyris, which they shortened, naturally suit their own lips, to lampyr, lampir, just as they borrowed numerous such as other Greek words, even apart from ecclesiastical phraseology, kit, a whale, tolas, a wave. Lampir, surviving in Bosnia, quickly evolved into vampir and was readily incorporated into their existing superstitions of vjeshitsa, the blood-sucking witch, and vukodlak, werwolf, helped perhaps by the association with the initial v. In Serbian to-day the words vampir and vukodlak are confused and used almost indiscriminately. to the neighbouring It is only the former that has penetrated language, In modern Greek it as in Rumania it survives under the form vdrcolac. with There may possibly also be association also appears as vrykolax. an Italian dialect word I have heard of, vamma, a variant of fiamma with Italian on the Dalmatian and fiamma, as there is close association of the coast and, too, Italian words came in through the penetration and Ottoman Serbia. bilingual Ragusans into both Nemanich Malcolm Istanbul. Burr.