Why are the undead - or rather a certain class of the undead kingdom - called “Zombies”?
My hunch was that the word came from either a West African language or from one of the mixed languages of the Caribbean, and it seems I was right.
Look it up in a dictionary! What a novel idea! :smack:
I got discouraged too soon when google presented me with a billion movie and music sites.
Thank you, Priceguy!
Hold on!!!
From the link, there is this definition:
In the interest of merely fighting ignorance. 
what is the right recipe for that? And why was that name given to that cocktail?
Though I believe it’s out of print - get your hands on a book by
Wade Davis called “The Serpent and the Rainbow”.
Yes, there’s a movie by that name and it is ever so loosely associated with the book. But the book is a serious work by a scientist who at the request of a pharmaceutical company, went to Haiti to examine the zombi phenomenon.
Try some and wait till the next morning.
Allan Metcalf discusses the etymology of the word Zombie in his book The World in So Many Words. It comes from some Bantu language, probably either Kimbundu or Kongo. In English it first turned up in a history of Brazil published in 1819, which says (quoting from the OED) “Zombi, the title whereby he [chief of Brazilian natives] was called, is the name for the Deity, in the Angolan tongue… NZambi is the word for Deity.”
It doesn’t cover the question about the name, but you may be interested in reading Cecil Adams on How do I go about creating a zombie?