Nightmares of Bleeding Chickens Dark Horses Walking in the Twilight, Vesel and Mergu
(Coșmaruri cu găini sângerânde, cai murgi mergând în amurg)
Jasper doesn't have a last name. It's never mentioned in dialogue, props, or non diagetic material like credits or show promo material.
He never says anything that might point to his original birth family or human adoptive family.
When Jasper tells his origin story of being orphaned, two vampires are the stars: Vesel and Mergu.
Jasper just tells a story of Vesel, a chicken eating vampire expelled from a coven, taking revenge on "Mergu"", an old Romanian vampire" who lead a coven of 17 that he says he was part of as a human boy. He says the slaughtered coven was like a blended "family" of humans and vampires and he had to flee from La Paz to Central America to Texas. And that when he was an old man he "found the Dark Gift after years of searching."
Jasper never specifies if he believed Mergu was dead or escaped or he even met him again.
Jasper never says who turned him.
Presumably Jasper, if he thought he had a family or had a family that was destroyed, would link his name to the coven and the coven leader somehow.
VESEL
Vesel as a Romanian name sounds like ve (meh) sel (eh). That means cheerful.
Vesel the cheerful is a "bitter old fucker" who carried out a hit on Mergu's coven after almost a millennia.
Vesel as Jasper pronounces it rhymes with "seal." It's most likely a mispronunciation (link to a dictionary with 50 pronunciations- fully none of them have a sound like "seal" in the second syllable).
As it is the translations in Romanian and Spanish of how he says "Veh-Seal" it are all over the place and confusing.
Somehow I don't think Jasper first encountered the name "Vesel" written down. I think he heard it.
If you try to match the pronunciation of how Jasper says it with Romanian, translator apps are all over the place:
"Vesil" is one word that means "vessel." This occurs most often.
But what if he heard two or three words from someone who strung them together? Perhaps while dying?
Google Translate: "Ves il" is two words like "I'm sorry." (Romanian) (This doesn't seem right, but ymmv)
Bing/Google Translate: "Vea sil" = "see you later" (Romanian)
Bing: "ve sil" = "come and see" (Romanian)
Google Translate: "Ve seel" = "See you later" (Romanian)
Google Translate. "Ves" = "west" (Romanian)
ve s-il "You see him" (Romanian)
ve și-l "You will see it" (Romanian)
ve sil "it's hot" (Latvian)
ve s'il - "see you" (Romanian)
ve și-l You will see it (Romanian)
MERGU
The second vampire in Jasper's story is Mergu, Jasper's coven leader.
HOW IT'S SPELLED IN THE SUBTITLES (MERGU) VERSUS HOW JASPER SAYS THE NAME (MURGU)
"Mergu" (how it's spelled in the subtitles) in Romanian translates to "I went". It seems to be a form of "a merge" which is equivalent English verb "to go"
It can also be translated as "I walked" or "I rode".
"Murgu" which is closer, in my opinion, to how Jasper actually pronounces the name, has different meanings in several languages.
ASSUMPTIONS:
There's Almost No Chance Jasper is Totally Monolingual Jasper speaks English with a stereotypical Texan accent but would likely know at least some phrases in Spanish or even Ayamara based on where he says the coven is and where he traveled. If he was with the coven for a tiny bit of time he may have even picked up a couple of Romanian phrases. We have no idea if and when he learned how to read in any language.
He's Saying His Own Coven Leader's Name Correctly I assume, even if he really only knows English, it is unlikely he'd mispronounce his coven leader's name from his childhood, especially if he'd been there for any length of time and had heard the name from other coven members or Mergu himself (much sooner and more probable than reading it or only reading it). It's not a name that would come up in conversation and he'd deliberately mispronounce in order to sound like he only ever speaks English (as part of assimilating as a human) because when would he bring it up after he fled?
Further, he has no reason to say it like he's reading it off a cue card like a native English speaker for Guy. People might let you mispronounce their name but they won't mispronounce their own name to you when they're assimilating. And if someone is more powerful than you, you learn how to say their name -- like Jasper in the coven
He Heard Vesel's Name and Didn't Read It On the other hand, he doesn't say Vesel like an English or Spanish speaker who has only seen it in print. He must have heard it.
TL;DNR: What is William Fichtner even doing in this scene?
MURGU/MURGH/MURG
Whatever other vampire is called this name suggests he's very old. He's at least roughly the same as as Vesel and may be much older. There are similar sounding words in languages like German and Persian and Hindi that date from around the 1200s. There are also several related words in Romanian and other eastern European languages that possibly predate the Romans.
Romanian murg dark-bay horse
Aromanian murgu,
Megleno-Romanian murg;
Romanian amurg 'twilight, dusk'; from Albanian murg "dark".
Another possible origin
Romanian amurg, -uri'sunset' related to the name of the Greek island Amorgós, and amorgís, -ídos textile plant (Chantraine). Probably from Preie. *AM-, *AN-
And this sound traveled.
MURGU
"Murgu" is a Romanian surname, as in "lui Murgu."
MURG(H) (Hindi via Persian)
"Murg" sounds a lot like "murgh", which Classical Persian passed down to Persian to end up as a loan word in Hindi for "chicken".
Remember the guy with this name is not the chicken eater in Jasper's story. Jasper says Vesel is
...while he has Henchie roll out cages of animals, rats and chickens for Jasper's zombie vampires to eat.
And where are revenants found in this showverse of the AREU? Romania. And which vampire left Romania first? ( We have no idea).
And who has a mentioned coven they're leading in this story? Not the vegan vampire.
MURG (Romanian)
Murg, Murga, Murgilă by Cristina Hanț In children’s folklore incantations, Murga is a demonic being. The same duality (light-darkness) is suggested in a spring song from the Sibiu area, collected by Hasdeu: “Pass by, rain, passerby/ Because the sun is coming/ And he will cut your legs/ With a top hat/ With a straw/ With Mihaiu’s club;/ On top of your head,/ Behind your head,/ Gloomy blood flows;/ Give me your hat/ Let it flow through the murga:/ Murga has fled,/ The rain has scattered!”.
murg adj m or n (feminine singular murgă, masculine plural murgi, feminine/neuter plural murge)
reddish-black
ash-coloured
generally, dark-coloured
murg n. m. (plural murgi)
a dark-coloured horse
"cal murg" = "dark horse" (google translate)
(Horse neighing, distorted ) ( Guy panting ) Guy: Horse. ♪ ♪ You're a boy, 11 or... 12 years old. And there's a-a horse. You're riding a horse. In a field. ( Whispering ) With the wind through your hair. ♪ ♪ This is a nice memory. ♪ ♪ But then the horse spooks. ( Horse neighs ) And you're terrified. That you'll fall. That you'll die. That you'll lose control. And you keep thinking over and over, "Don't lose control. Don't lose control." ♪ ♪ But then you let go. And the horse takes you with him. And you are one with him. You're alive. You've never felt more alive. ♪ ♪ Never before. ♪ ♪ Never since.
MURGULET n. m. (plural murguleți)
diminutive of murg; a small dark-coloured horse
Would Jasper have thought of himself as a murguleț, a small dark colored horse? A little Murgu?
AMURG (Romanian) n. (plural amurguri)
dusk
twilight
MURGI Latvian Murgi (n) (m) (1st declension)
nightmare
Because I'm not a Romanian speaker I decided to look for actual people saying or singing the word instead of a robot and this Romanian folk song was the first non-chicken related thing that came up:
This guy is crying through song about not being able to feed his horse and not being able to sleep because of the singing of a blackbird and a cuckoo. He wants to hold or squeeze the cuckoo, rip out its heart and place his own in its chest so it can sing about his heartbreak. They stand in for the humans he's heartbroken over -but even so?
Crying about a horse and a lover in song? What genre of music does that remind you of? The fiddles and the flute especially remind me of Indian folk music.
And Romanian folk music is full of people sadly singing next to horses.
These names and their evocative meanings may mean that Jasper truly has no idea who his maker or the vampire who took revenge on him are.
Or perhaps Jasper is anonymizing everyone involved while anonymizing himself- a vampire with a name that means dusk, twilight, nightmares, some version of "to go," a personification of the setting sun? That's almost every vampire cliche right there.
Another vampire whose name means cheerful but could also mean "you see him?"
Vesel is the chicken eating, vegan vampire who was kicked out of the coven and took revenge, but why do the most interesting name associations point towards Mergu?
