Why is it called Hellsing?
It is Van Helsing with the hell left in, on purpose.
Kohta Hirano took the title from Abraham Van Helsing, the vampire hunter of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, because his heroine Integra is Van Helsing’s descendant. The extra letter is the point: Hirano has said the “hell” in Hellsing was deliberate, a play on the word meant to promise destruction. It is not a misprint that stuck.
THE THREE LAYERS OF THE NAME
Novel, wordplay, and familyThe novel
Everything in Hellsing descends from Dracula: the hunter, the Count, and the defeat that binds them. Naming the agency for Van Helsing declares the book a sequel to Stoker’s, a century on.
The wordplay
Helsing plus hell. In Japanese the joke is invisible: the katakana ヘルシング spells Helsing and Hellsing identically, so the doubled L is a gift to the English-reading eye only.
The family
Inside the story, the name changed with the family: Van Helsing’s line settled in England, converted, and Anglicized its name to Hellsing, second L included. The agency carries the family name, as the family carries the agency.
The correction
Hirano has had to defend even the prototype’s plain title, Hellsing, against the later subtitle “The Legends of Vampire Hunter.” He is consistent about names: the short one is the real one.