Siberian Draculesses

The most successful term referring to vampires, namely the word ‘vampire’ itself, as is widely known, is etymologically Turkic. It is an agent noun derived from the verbal stem oop- ‘to gulp down’; see, a.o., Stachowski K. (2005), User (2010) and Ragagnin (2013). In the long history of linguistic and cultural interactions in Eurasia, Turkic has provided various neighbouring languages with quite a lot of terms pertaining, a.o., to the semantic field of magics, witchcraft and supernatural beings. For instance, Hungarian boszorkány ‘witch, sorceress’ can be traced back to West Old Turkic *basarkan corresponding to East Old Turkic basïrkan ‘the one who is oppressing (during sleep), nightmare, the one causing a nightmare’ from bas- ‘to press’ augmented by the suffixes -(X)rkA- and -Xn (Róna-Tas and Berta 2011:158–160). Besides, two key figures in Mongolian shamanism, udagan and bö’e, ‘shamanness’ and ‘shaman’, respectively, are both of clear Turkic origin; see Janhunen (1986), Doerfer (1963:233–234), Choi (1992) and Ragagnin (2019). On the other hand, Old Turkic yelvi ‘sorcery,witchcraft’ (Clauson1972:919b–920a) does not have a straightforward Turkic etymology; Erdal (1991: 336) argued that it might be an Early Mongol loanword. Similarly, several names with reference to supernatural evil creatures are of foreign origin. This contribution offers some considerations and insights on three names referring to cannibal and, at times, vampiresque Sayan Turkic witches, namely šulmus ~ šulbus, albïs and ǰelbege ~ ǰïlbaɣa.