How vampires began?

Answer 1

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first appearance of the word vampire in English from 1734, in a travelogue titled Travels of Three English Gentlemen published in the Harleian Miscellany in 1745.[11][12] Vampires had already been discussed in German literature.[13] After Austria gained control of northern Serbia and Oltenia in 1718, officials noted the local practice of exhuming bodies and "killing vampires".[13] These reports, prepared between 1725 and 1732, received widespread publicity.[13]

The English term was derived (possibly via French vampyre) from the German Vampir, in turn thought to be derived in the early 18th century from the Serbian вампир/vampir.[14][15][16][17][18] The Serbian form has parallels in virtually all Slavic languages: Bulgarian вампир (vampir), Czech and Slovak upír, Polish wąpierz, and (perhaps East Slavic-influenced) upiór, Russian упырь (upyr'), Belarusian упыр (upyr), Ukrainian упирь (upir'), from Old Russian упирь (upir'). (Note that many of these languages have also borrowed forms such as "vampir/wampir" subsequently from the West; these are distinct from the original local words for the creature.) The exact etymology is unclear.[19] Among the proposed proto-Slavic forms are *ǫpyrь and *ǫpirь.[20] An older, and less widespread, theory is that the Slavic languages have borrowed the word from a Turkic term for "witch" (e.g., Tatar ubyr).[20][21]

The first recorded use of the Old Russian form Упирь (Upir') is commonly believed to be in a document dated 6555 (1047 AD).[22] It is a colophon in a manuscript of the Book of Psalms written by a priest who transcribed the book from Glagolitic into Cyrillic for the Novgorodian Prince Vladimir Yaroslavovich.[23] The priest writes that his name is "Upir'Likhyi " (Упирь Лихый), which means something like "Wicked Vampire" or "Foul Vampire".[24] This apparently strange name has been cited as an example both of surviving paganism and of the use of nicknames as personal names.[25]