The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples or their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Early Middle Ages, which in turn is thought to have descended from the earlier Proto-Balto-Slavic language, linking the Slavic languages to the Baltic languages in a Balto-Slavic group within the Indo-European family.
A vampire is a creature from folklore that subsists by feeding on the vital essence of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited while they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century.
In folklore, a werewolf, or occasionally lycanthrope, is a human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf, either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction with the transformations occurring on the night of a full moon. Early sources for belief in this ability or affliction, called lycanthropy, are Petronius (27–66) and Gervase of Tilbury (1150–1228).
Ukrainian, historically also called Ruthenian, is an East Slavic language of the Indo-European language family, and is one of Slavic languages, which are part of a larger Balto-Slavic branch. It is the native language of Ukrainians and the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script.
Vampire: The Dark Ages is a tabletop role-playing game published by White Wolf Publishing in March 1996. It is a spin-off from Vampire: The Masquerade, also published by White Wolf, which is set in modern times. It was released in a new edition in 2002 as Dark Ages: Vampire, and in 2015 as Vampire Twentieth Anniversary Edition: The Dark Ages.
Knyaz or knez is a historical Slavic title, used both as a royal and noble title in different times of history and different ancient Slavic lands. It is usually translated into English as prince, duke or count, depending on specific historical context and the potentially known Latin equivalents of the title for each bearer of the name. In Latin sources the title is usually translated as comes or princeps, but the word was originally derived from the common Germanic *kuningaz (king).
Yat or Jat is the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet.
Eastern Slavic naming customs are the traditional way of identifying a person's given name and patronymic name in Russia and some countries formerly part of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union.
Other than the many gods and goddesses of the Slavs, the ancient Slavs believed in and revered many supernatural beings that existed in nature. These supernatural beings in Slavic religion come in various forms, and the same name of any single being can be spelled or transliterated differently according to language and transliteration system.
Russian is an East Slavic language of the Indo-European family. All Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Although no written records remain, much of the culture and religion of the Proto-Indo-European people can also be reconstructed based on their daughter cultures traditionally and continuing to inhabit most of Europe and South Asia, areas to where the Proto-Indo-Europeans migrated from their original homeland.
Khors is a Slavic god of uncertain functions mentioned since the 12th century. Generally interpreted as a sun god, sometimes as a moon god. The meaning of the theonym is also unknown: most often his name has been combined with the Iranian word for sun, such as the Persian xoršid, or the Ossetian xor, but modern linguists strongly criticize such an etymology, and other native etymologies are proposed instead.
In folklore, a revenant is an animated corpse that is believed to have revived from death to haunt the living. The word revenant is derived from the Old French word, revenant, the "returning".
Vrykolakas, also called vorvolakas or vourdoulakas, is a harmful, undead creature in Greek folklore. It shares similarities with numerous other legendary creatures, but is generally equated with the vampire of the folklore of the neighbouring Slavic countries. While the two are very similar, a vrykolakas eats flesh, particularly livers, rather than drink blood, which combined with other factors such as its appearance bring it more in line with the modern concept of a zombie.
Were-hyena is a neologism coined in analogy to werewolf for therianthropy involving hyenas. It is common in the folklore of the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Near East as well as some adjacent territories. Unlike werewolves and other therianthropes, which are usually portrayed as being originally human, some werehyena lore tells of how they can also be hyenas disguised as humans.
The Vampire by Night is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. She is the niece to Jack Russell and has the ability to shapeshift into either a werewolf or a vampiress between dusk and dawn.
The name "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 Dracula (1897), and the film Nosferatu (1922). One of the suggested etymologies of the term is that it is derived from the Romanian Nesuferit.
Legends of vampires have existed for millennia; cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demonic entities and blood-drinking spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. Despite the occurrence of vampire-like creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity known today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century Southeastern Europe, particularly Transylvania as verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, vampires are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or a living person being bitten by a vampire themselves. Belief in such legends became so rife that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires.
The Family of the Vourdalak is a gothic novella by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in 1839 in French and originally entitled La Famille du Vourdalak. Fragment inedit des Memoires d’un inconnu. Tolstoy wrote it on a trip to France from Frankfurt, where he was attached to the Russian Embassy.
Ubir is a mythological or folkloric being in Turkic mythology who subsists by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether it is an undead person or being.
This is a list of fiction and media of all kinds of media featuring werewolves, lycanthropy and shape-shifting.
