Nosferatu

"Nosferatu" has been presented as an archaic Romanian word, synonymous with "vampire". However, it was largely popularized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Western fiction such as the gothic novel Dracula (1897), and the expressionist film Nosferatu (1922). One of the suggested etymologies of the term is that it is derived from the Romanian Nesuferit ("offensive" or "troublesome"). Origins of the word The etymology of the word nosferatu is undetermined. There is no doubt that it achieved currency through Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula and its unauthorised first cinematic adaptation, Nosferatu (1922). Stoker identified his source for the term as 19th-century British author and speaker Emily Gerard. It is commonly thought that Gerard introduced the word into print in an 1885 magazine article, "Transylvanian Superstitions", and in her travelogue The Land Beyond the Forest ("Transylvania" is Latin for "beyond the forest", literally "across/through the forest"). She merely refers to "Nosferatu" as the Romanian word for vampire: More decidedly evil, however, is the vampire, or nosferatu, in which every Romanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell. 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, either by opening the grave of the person suspected and driving a stake through the corpse, or firing a pistol shot into the coffin. In very obstinate cases it is further recommended to cut off the head and replace it in the coffin with the mouth filled with garlic, or to extract the heart and burn it, strewing the ashes over the grave. However, the word had already appeared in an 1865 German-language article by Wilhelm Schmidt. Schmidt's article discusses Transylvanian customs and appeared in an Austro-Hungarian magazine, which Gerard could have encountered as a reviewer of German literature living in Austria-Hungary. Schmidt's article also mentions the legendary Scholomance by name, which parallels Gerard's "Transylvanian Superstitions".