Iconic though the name “Dracula” has become in our culture, it is, in fact, a diminutive. The Transylvanian potentate Vlad III, who was feared for impaling his captured military opponents, took it from his father, Vlad II, who was known as “Dracul,” or “the Dragon.” Vlad II, who ruled over neighboring Wallachia before hostile relatives drove him across the border, earned the epithet from his membership in the Order of the Dragon, a medieval chivalric order founded for reigning sovereigns by the 15th-century Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg. Adding a final “a” connotes “son of,” which might be appropriate since everything we know about the fictional “Dracula” derives from the title character in the Irish author Bram Stoker’s lasting gothic horror novel of 1897.
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