Dhampire is a Romanian word, not English. It does not appear in any authoritative English dictionary, nor do I know any friendly Romanians who might pronounce it for me. So my answer here is speculative, based on my experience with the word.

Let’s take this one syllable at a time.

The D is pronounced, but the H is largely silent, serving only to flavor the A that follows. The A we hear is not the same A as in ‘dam’ (or indeed, ‘vampire’), but is more like the A in ‘father.’

With me so far? Good.

I have heard the second syllable pronounced two ways. Usually, it is pronounced like ‘peer’ (as in look) or pier (that thing you fish off of). Sometimes it is pronounced like the second syllable in ‘vampire.’ However, given that ‘dhampir’ is an accepted variant spelling, I believe that ‘peer’ is preferable.

Most of the confusion about this word arises from the English dubs of the Vampire Hunter D movies, where it is consistently mispronounced ‘dam peal’ or even ‘dun peal.’ You can blame this on the fact that our relatively obscure term was translated from English (well, Romanian, actually) into Japanese and then back into English again by people unfamiliar with the original folklore.

So there you are, too much information about one of the more peculiar night creatures. If there are any Romanians reading this, please feel free to chime in.

Dave Hurwitz