5 fan questions about The Walking Dead answered for August 19, 2017

So, what do they call you?

Kyle J. West on Facebook asks: “I remember early on in the series (season 1, I think) Glenn calls the walkers “Geeks”. We know that the phrase “zombie” isn’t used in the series… but I’ve always been curious what other groups call the undead.”

There have been a ton of names for zombies in the world of The Walking Dead. Spanning across the comics, games, and AMC shows, the list of the names is crazy long, and some of them are pretty creative.

Here are just some of the names used to this point for the undead to this point:

• walkers
• biters
• roamers
• rotters
• creepers
• geeks
• lurkers
• skin eaters
• wasted
• dead ones
• muertos
• lame brains
• floaters
• infected
• stinkers
• skin bags
• meat puppets
• empties
• deadies
• ghouls
• deadhead
• and many more

While ‘zombie’ hasn’t been used on the TV show, it actually has been said in the comic book series. In the first two volumes, both Glenn and Rick use the term before changing things up and not using it again.

This is likely akin to when Robert Kirkman had his walkers doing smart things with working doorknobs and picking up rocks or teddy bears in season 1 of the show, and never going back to it again.