One of the most obnoxious things I’ve dealt with as a Dracula fan...
Outside of the occasional person bluffing that they read the Stoker novel by talking about how the “Love story” between Mina and Dracula is “one sided” (when there is no love story in the novel at all between them…) is the following…
Here it goes, so buckle up.
First the history: You’ll need to know this first. The name Dracula comes from Vlad III of Wallachia AKA Vlad Țepeș (The Impaler). Țepeș is not a surname (despite what Castlevania did with it.) It just means “Impaler” and Vlad never signed his name with it.
Vlad is a nickname, by the way. The full name he signed was “Vladislaus” (Originally spelt as Wladislaus).
(“Latin” Vlad signatures archived at the National Museum of Romanian History. Yes, he signed his name multiple different ways based on who he was addressing. There’s a more blocky version in an alphabet I can’t actually read, intended for fifteenth century Wallachian readers.)
Vlad’s House name was actually Bassarb but when his boyar (noble) cousins betrayed his father and older brother (causing their deaths) he renounced the house name and took on the patronymic surname of Dracula (archaic spellings such as Drakulya).
Vlad’s father, Vlad II was a member of the Order of the Dragon ( Latin: Societas Draconistarum, direct translation: “Society of the dragonists.”). Vlad II referred to himself proudly as Dracul. Even though in modern Romanian Dracul now means Devil, in the fifteenth century it was closer to the Latin Draco and more often than not used to mean dragon.
Dracula means “Little dragon” or “Son of the Dragon.” the “A” at the end gives this distinction. (This is part of why it annoys me when people call the vampire Dracul. No, that’s his Father, if you’re using the Vlad the Impaler backstory).
It’s true that in modern Romanian Dracula now means “Son of The Devil” but in the fifteenth century the word was closer to “Dragon” than “Devil.”
It is through this chosen surname that Dracula changed his house to
Drăculești (House of the dragon) and renounced his cousins and their name, Bassarb.
Anyway, I was on IMVU role playing as Dracula (this was in 2010 or so, so this was a good nine years ago). I was on as CountVladDracula and someone sent me a message proudly informing me that Dracula means “Devil.” I politely corrected them that in the fifteenth century it was more often used to mean son of the dragon and the chosen surname of Vlad the Impaler because of his and his father’s membership to The Order of the Dragon.
Instead of accepting this correction I got a reply of “You’re American. Americans don’t travel so you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m Romanian so I should know. It’s my language after all and it always meant Devil!”
You would think this would be a one time incident but on a short lived Tumblr RP account I got a similar message just two years ago. Yet again it was from a “real Romanian” “correcting me” that the name “means Son of The Devil” and the irony? It was in response to a very long post talking about The Order of The Dragon…
Never assume someone from a different country can’t research your leaders or name etymology. Some of us actually like to learn.
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