Wherewolf - Names

Names

The word werewolf continues a late Old English wer(e)wulf, a compound of were "adult male human" and wulf "wolf". The only Old High German testimony is in the form of a given name, Weriuuolf, although an early Middle High German werwolf is found in Burchard of Worms and Berthold of Regensburg. The word or concept does not occur in medieval German poetry or fiction, gaining popularity only from the 15th century. Middle Latin gerulphus Anglo-Norman garwalf, Old Frankish *wariwulf. Old Norse had the cognate varúlfur, but because of the high importance of werewulves in Norse mythology, there were alternative terms such as ulfhéðinn ("one in wolf-skin", referring still to the totemistic/cultic adoption of wolf-nature rather than the superstitious belief in actual shape-shifting). In modern Scandinavian also kveldulf "evening-wolf", presumably after the name of Kveldulf Bjalfason, a historical berserker of the 9th century who figures in the Icelandic sagas.

The term lycanthropy, referring both to the ability to transform oneself into a wolf and to the act of so doing, comes from Ancient Greek λυκάνθρωπος lukánthropos (from λύκος lúkos "wolf" and άνθρωπος, ánthrōpos "human". The word does occur in ancient Greek sources, but only in Late Antiquity, only rarely, and only in the context of clinical lycanthropy described by Galen, where the patient had the ravenous appetite and other qualities of a wolf; the Greek word attains some currency only in Byzantine Greek, featuring in the 10th-century encyclopedia Suda. Use of the Greek-derived lycanthropy in English occurs in learned writing beginning in the later 16th century (first recorded 1584 in Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot, who argued against the reality of werewolves; "Lycanthropia is a disease, and not a transformation." v. i. 92), at first explicitly for clinical lycanthropy, i.e. the type of insanity where the patient imagines to have transformed into a wolf, and not in reference to supposedly real shape-shifting. Use of lycanthropy for supposed shape-shifting is much later, introduced ca. 1830.

Slavic uses the term vlko-dlak, literally "wolf-skin", paralleling the Old Norse ulfhéðinn. However, the word is not attested in the medieval period (Polish wilkołak, Czech vlkodlak, Slovak vlkolak, Serbo-Croatian вукодлак - vukodlak, Slovenian volkodlak, Bulgarian/Macedonian върколак vrkolak, Belarusian ваўкалак vaukalak, Ukrainian вовкулака vovkulaka), loaned into modern Greek as Vrykolakas. Baltic has related terms, Lithuanian vilkolakis and vilkatas, Latvianvilkatis and vilkacis. The name vurdalak (вурдалак) for the Slavic vampire ("ghoul, revenant") is a corruption due to Alexander Pushkin, which was later widely spread by A.K. Tolstoy in his novella The Family of the Vourdalak (composed in French, but first published in Russian translation in 1884).

Greek λυκανθρωπος and Germanic werewulf are parallel inasmuch as the concept of a shapeshifter becoming a wolf is expressed by means of a compound "wolf-man" or "man-wolf". Latin and the Romance languages do not appear to have a native term for the concept but loaned terms from Greek, Germanic or Slavic; In French loup-garou, the garou is in origin a loan of Frankish *wariwulf, recharacterized with the French word for "wolf". Spanish and Portuguese have the modern loan-translations hombre lobo and lobisomem, respectively (also Galician lobishome). Italian has the Greek licantropo in learned or literary context (as English uses lycanthrope besides the native werewolf), while Italian folklore uses the term lupo mannaro. This latter Italian term however does not necessarily denote a werewolf, but more often concerns stories of enormous and man-eating, but not supernatural, wolves. Romanian loaned the Slavic term as vârcolac.