How broad is the Alucard trope? (Related to various Sdrawkcab tropes)

I vaguely feel like I might have asked this previously or added a related example to this at some point, but I'm not sure.

So, the Alucard is about the use of that as an alias for Dracula, but I'm wondering if it applies to other vampire examples. And at least I think it should.

Specifically, as far as I know, the Trope Maker of "vampire using aliases of their name" originated in the earlier Carmilla, in which the eponymous Lesbian Vampire is actually named Mircalla and at various points uses the aliases Millacara and Carmilla.

The original novel Dracula does not use this trope, although it does something kind of similar in having Dracula use the alias De Ville. De Ville being a pun on devil and Dracula [[ThisIsMyNameOnForeign more or less meaning The Devil in Romanian.

While I doubt everyone using the Alucard trope is familiar with Carmilla, I wonder if there is some Lost in Imitation going on where a trope with one vampire classic becomes associated with another.

Part of why I wondered about the broadness of the trope is that there's a Discworld example about a vampire character using an anagram of her name as an alias due to a combination of the Law Of Narrative Causality and Contractual Genre Blindness. I think this example fits as well, even though it does not involve the use of the name Alucard as an alias.

Thoughts?

Edited by Hodor2 on Aug 14th 2020 at 5:50:36 AM

I'm inclined to use the definition given in Discworld; "vampires use Sdrawkcab Name as an alias", with the caveat that there is a sister trope of creators naming a vampire based on spelling Dracula's name backwards, which is otherwise indistinguishable from Alucard being an alias and therefore sharing the same page.

I could also rephrase this as believing that this is the trope of naming your vampire character based on spelling Dracula's name backwards, and there is a smaller sister trope where the vampire character uses their own name, spelled backwards, as a convenient alias. The difference between creator/character is minor enough (given context of vampire/sdrawkcab) that it isn't worth splitting both off from Sdrawkcab Name.

Either way, Carmilla and De Ville would not be examples under my interpretation.

Appreciate the response. Reading Alucard the trope more closely, I see that it is about that specific name / use of that specific name as a Backwards Alias.

I definitely agree that the De Ville example wouldn't fit. Honestly, I was kind of thinking out loud about the possible origins of the "vampires use aliases" trope.

I do think it's too bad though that Carmilla seemingly wouldn't fit Alucard though. While her name obviously is not Alucard/Dracula, she (well, the writer Sheridan Le Fanu) is the one who made up the "vampire hiding their identity through anagram" thing in the first place.

I don't think "vampires use aliases" or "vampire hiding their identity through anagram" are tropes. At least, not unique enough to split from Nom de Guerre and Significant Anagram. There's plenty of different Naming Conventions that could be used, but don't really have the same vampire association as Alucard. Except for My Grandson, Myself, of course.

So maybe it's an Unbuilt Trope.