#OTD in 1897. First publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Let's celebrate #DraculaDay!
The novel was mostly written in the 1890s, and Stoker produced over a hundred pages of notes, drawing extensively from folklore and history. He probably found the name "Dracula" in Whitby's public library while on holiday, selecting it because he thought it meant 'devil' in Romanian.
Dracula at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345
Non-checked on the web answer:
Literal translation: Drake
Meaning: Dragon = (fire) drake.
But this could of course be wrong, wrong, wrong.
"Meaning & History
Means "son of Dracul" in Romanian, with Dracul being derived from Romanian drac "dragon". It was a nickname of the 15th-century Wallachian prince Vlad III, called the Impaler, whose father was Vlad II Dracul. However, the name Dracula is now most known from the 1897 novel of the same name by Bram Stoker, which features the Transylvanian vampire Count Dracula, probably inspired by the historical Wallachian prince."
@jmcrookston
I tried to reproduce those translation with both Bing Translate and (before I twigged it is AI) DeepL.
Could not get either to equate drac - dragon.
Maybe archaic Romanian or a Latin-Romanian?
Project Gutenberg
Jonathan
skua