Re: Vampire

Jim Rader wrote:

>Grigore Nandris,, in an article in the _Slavonic and East
>European Review_ (37:371-77; June, 1959) argued
>persuasively (to me) that the <-a> in Dracula is an adaptation
>of the Slavic masculine genitive ending <-a> as used in
>patronymics of the type "StefanU synU Bogdana." He gives a
>number of other examples from Slavo-Romanian chancery
>documents. In Latin sources this form is taken as
>nominative and given the gen. ending <-e> and the
>acc. ending <-am>.
>Hence Dracula is in effect nothing more than "son of Dracul
>(i.e., Vlad II, or Vlad I depending on how many Vlad's you
>count). Vlad III did in fact sign his name "Dragulya" (1475)
>and "Drakulya" (1476) in surviving letters, so the name was
>not a posthumous creation. I don't think too much significance
>should be placed on the variation between <g> and
><k>.

If so, then there are the latter variants actually have nothing
to do with the Slavic -a ending proposed by the linguist
Greg NandriS (who was from Northern Moldova, a.k.a. Bukovina,
had Transylvanian ancestors, and died in exile).

The question will be then whether the spelling
Dragulya reflects the Romanian drãculea (which simply
means "li'l devil", i.e. the diminutive to dracul "the devil"),
or whether it's to be read as a variant of the name Dragul
"the/my/our dear" < (Slavic) adj. drag "dear," that has
generated so many (sur)names & nicknames in Romanian.
This second possibility is seen as less plausible
simply because Vlad Senior had Dracul as a cognomen.

So, NandriS's assumption is kinda commonly accepted
knowledge in Romania, namely that Dracula should be
understood as "Dracul's son" (for, otherwise, the Slavic
-a ending means nothing in Romanian, i.e. a Romanian
native-speaker does not understand its semantic
function, although it plays a considerable role in
Romanian onomastics).

George