Vampires

[Lewis B. Sckolnick]

Even if yoiu do not like the idea please try to remember that the Turkic 
came first.
Even the Japanese have borrowed a whole bunch from us.


The English word vampire was borrowed from French vampire in turn 
borrowed in early 18th century from Serbian ??????/vampir, or, according 
to some sources, from Hungarian vampir. The Serbian and Hungarian forms 
have parallels in virtually all Slavic languages: German (vampir) 
Bulgarian ?????? (vampir), ????? (vapir) or ?????, Czech and Slovak 
upir, Polish wapierz and (perhaps East Slavic-influenced) upior, Russian 
????? (upyr' ), Belarussian ??i? (upyr), Ukrainian ????? (upir' ), from 
Old Russian ????? (upir' ).

The word Upir as a term for vampire is found for the first time in 
written form in 1047 in a letter to a Novgorodian prince referring to 
him as 'Upir Lichyj' (Wicked Vampire in Old Russian).

Tracing the source of 'upir' and its   Slavic cognates (i.e., upior, 
obyrbi, upirbi, obiri) is even   more controversial. Among the proposed 
proto-Slavic forms are opyr? and opir?. Franz Miklosich, a late 19th 
century linguist, suggested that 'upir' is derived from 'uber', a 
Turkish word for  'witch' (cf. Kazan Tatar ubyr "witch"). Andre Vaillant 
suggests just the opposite -- that the   Northern Turkish word 'uber' 
derived from the Slavic 'upir'. More recently, Jan Perkowski, who has 
done a great amount of   research on the vampires of the Slavs, also 
favors a Slavic origin to the word.

But even amongst those who lean towards a Slavic origin, there is 
considerable disagreement.  Kazimierz Moszynski suggests that   'u-pir' 
is from a Serbo-Croatian word 'pirati' (to blow). Aleksandr Afanas'ev 
points to the Slavic 'pij' (to drink), which may have entered the Slavic 
language from the Greek, via Old Church Slavonic. The Slavic word might, 
like its possible Russian cognate netopyr' ("bat"), come from the 
Proto-Indo-European root for "to fly".



  Lewis B. Sckolnick
The Ledge House
130 Rattlesnake Gutter Road, Suite 1000
Leverett, MA 01054-9726
U.S.A.

Telephone 1. 413. 367. 0303
Facsimile 1. 413. 367. 2853
info at runanywhere.com
http://www.twitter.com/Lewisxxxusa






>
>> Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2010 20:23:05 -0500
>> From: toastormulch at GMAIL.COM
>> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Russian folkloric references to reanimated corpses
>> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
>>
>> Vurdolak is encountered in Afanas'ev' tales, in Pushkin. Also see Alexei
>> Kostantinovich Tolstoy story Sem'ia Vurkodlaka/Vurdolaka. Revenants are also
>> called in Russian Upyr' ili Nav'.
>> On Dec 25, 2010 7:30 PM, "Dorian Juric"<dorian06 at hotmail.com>  wrote:
>>> I thought that Vurdolak/Vukodlak is more of a South Slavic usage. I know
>> that the term bleeds into the Ukraine, but I'm not sure that any sources
>> site Vurdolak in Russia. I'll look through my Perkowski, Barber and
>> Cajkanovic again, but I was quite certain that eretik was the most common
>> usage in Russia.
>>> Dorian Juric
>>>

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