What is "pontianak"

The pontianak (Dutch-Indonesian spelling: boentianak, Jawi: ڤونتيانق) is a female vampiric ghost in Malaysian and Indonesian mythology. It is also known as a matianak or kuntilanak, sometimes shortened to kunti. The pontianak are said to be the spirits of women who died while pregnant. This is despite the fact that the earliest recordings of pontianaks in Malay lore describe the ghost as originating from a stillborn child. This is often confused with a related creature, the lang suir, which is the ghost of a woman who died while giving birth. The word pontianak is reportedly a corruption of the Malaysian perempuan mati beranak, or “ woman who died in childbirth”. Another theory is that the word is a combination of puan (woman) + mati (die) + anak (child). The term matianak means "death of a child". The city of Pontianak in Indonesia is named after this wicked creature, which was claimed to have haunted the first sultan who once settled there.

Pontianak may refer to:

• Pontianak Malay, a Malay variant spoken in Pontianak, West Kalimantan
• Pontianak, Indonesia, a city in West Kalimantan
  • East Pontianak
  • North Pontianak
  • Pontianak City
  • South Pontianak
  • South East Pontianak
  • West Pontianak
• Pontianak Regency, a regency of West Kalimantan, Indonesia
• Pontianak Sultanate, a former state in Indonesia
• Pontianak (folklore), a type of vampire in Malay folklore
• Asia/Pontianak, a name for a zone in the IANA time zone database