Where is Baba Roga from?

Search: baba roga

Why: In the New Yorker short story "The Tiger's Wife" by Téa Obrecht:

They would have been better equipped to react if Vladisa had told them that he had met the witch Baba Roga and, in that same instant, her skull-and-bones hut on its one giant chicken leg had come tearing down the hillside after him.

Answer: She is from Slavic folklore! She flies around on a giant mortar and kidnaps children (to eat them). In various languages, her name is:

• Baba Jaga (in Czech, Slovak, and Polish)
• Ježibaba (in Czech and Slovak)
• Jaga Baba (in Slovene)
• Баба Яга (or Baba Yaga in Russian, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian)
  
• Baba Yaha (in Ukranian)
• Baba Dochia (in Romanian)
• Baba Cloantza (or "old hag with broken teeth" in Romanian)
• Baba Roga (in Croatian or Bosnian) (ding ding ding!!)
• Баба Рога (in Serbian and Macedonian)
  

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: Baba is a pejorative form of "grandmother" (kind of like Bubbe, which is not pejorative). Yaga comes from the name Jadwiga, which comes from Hedwig. Nothing to see here.