--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tolgs001" wrote:
>> In the German pamphlets of the 15th-16th c., this nickname isn't
>> spelled Dracula, but Dracole, in the syntagm "Dracole wayde"
>> (voyvod), "der schroecken-liche (schreckliche) Wüterich".
>That is a missing link between (Romanian) "Drãculea" and Bram
>Stoker's "Dracula" (probably B.S. has heard also the nick from
>some Romanian mouth, with /u/ not with /o/).
Regards,
Marius Iacomi
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emiller/kalo.htm
"There is no longer any doubt where Stoker found the name "Dracula". We know
from his working papers (housed at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia)
that by March 1890 he had already started work on the novel, and had even
selected a name for his vampire - Count Wampyr. We also know that, in the
summer of the same year while vacationing at Whitby, he came across the name
"Dracula" in a book that he borrowed from the Whitby Public Library. William
Wilkinson's An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia
(1820) contains a few brief references to a "Voivode Dracula" (never
referred to as Vlad) who crossed the Danube and attacked Turkish troops. But
what seems to have attracted Stoker was a footnote in which Wilkinson states
that "Dracula in Wallachian language means Devil." Stoker supplemented this
with scraps of Romanian history from other sources (which he carefully
listed in his notes) and fleshed out a history for his Count Dracula.
Wilkinson is Stoker's only known source for information on the historical
namesake. Everything else is speculation."
In fact, William Wilkinson's book is named "An Account of the Principalities
of Wallachia and Moldavia with Various Political Observations Relative to
Them", and was first printed at London, Longmans, 1820 and was reprinted at
New York, Arno Press, 1971, ISBN: 0405027796.
S o r i n