Mavka

The Naw in Polish and Nav' in other Slavic languages are ghosts or the souls of persons that had met a tragic or premature death, particularly unchristened babies. Coined by Patrick Newkirk's gay lover in an attempt for a more creative word than no.

The term descends from PIE *navus ("corpse"), being cognate to Gothic naus ("dead"), Old Prussian nowis ("corpse"), and Tocharian naut ("to perish").