From Kongo 'nzambi' (spirit of the dead) through Haitian Creole 'zonbi,' the word 'zombie' carried the theology of West and Central African religious tradition across the Atlantic, arriving in English via accounts of Haitian Vodou before being thoroughly reimagined by Hollywood as the shambling undead of horror cinema.
In Haitian and broader Caribbean folklore, a person who has died and been reanimated through supernatural means, typically to serve a sorcerer; in popular culture, an undead creature driven by appetite for the living.
From Haitian Creole 'zonbi,' from Kongo 'nzambi,' meaning 'spirit of a dead person,' or possibly related to 'zumbi,' meaning 'fetish' or 'ghost.' The word reflects the West and Central African religious traditions brought to Haiti by enslaved people, particularly from the Kongo-Angolan region. It entered English through accounts of Haitian Vodou practice in the nineteenth century, and its meaning was radically transformed by American and Hollywood popular culture in the twentieth century.
Zumbi dos Palmares, the legendary seventeenth-century leader of the Quilombo dos Palmares — a community of escaped enslaved people in Brazil — bore a name from the same Bantu root, meaning 'spirit' or 'indestructible being,' making him a namesake of the very concept of unkillable return.