A Dhampir in Balkan folklore

Folklore

Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...

 is the child of a vampire

Vampire

Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...

 father and a human mother. The term is sometimes spelled dhampyre, dhamphir, or dhampyr. Dhampir powers are similar to those of vampires, but without the usual weaknesses. Dhampirs are supposed to be adept at detecting and killing vampires.

In recent vampire fiction

Vampire fiction

Vampire literature covers the spectrum of literary work concerned principally with the subject of vampires. The literary vampire first appeared in 18th century poetry, before becoming one of the stock figures of gothic fiction with the publication of Polidori's The Vampyre , which was inspired by...

, Dhampir (or sometimes "dampeer" or dunpeal due to translation difficulties with the Japanese anime Vampire Hunter D and its sequel) refers to any hybrid of one human and one vampire parent; they are half-breeds, not vampires themselves.
The word dhampir is believed to derive directly from Albanian

Albanian language

Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...

: pij or pirё which means "to drink", and dhёmbё or dham which means "teeth", thus dhampir, "to drink with teeth".
The word "dhampir" is associated with Balkan folklore, as described by T. P. Vukanović

Tatomir Vukanovic

Tatomir P. Vukanović was a prominent historian and ethnologist of the Balkans region of south-eastern Europe. Born in Serbia, he concentrated on the history, folklore and culture of the Serb and Roma inhabitants of Yugoslavia in general and the southern province of Kosovo in...

.