The term of "Urban Legend" has not been used since ancient time and it were used as a term that distinguish the differentiation between folklore legend and urban legend. The Legend that is considered a true event by most people but posses no real evident to deliver the truth and simply walk along side the road of methodological comparison. Although the term stated that "the legend" was called Urban Legend it is not necessarily belong or originated from urban area. Because of that many expert prefer to called the legend as contemporary legend rather than "urban legend". Jan Harold Brunvand, professor of English at the University of Utah, introduced the term to the general public in a series of popular books published beginning in 1981. Brunvand has since published a series of similar books, and is credited as the first to use the term vector (inspired by the concept of biological vectors) to describe a person or entity passing on an urban legend.

Urban legend doesn't seem to posses the same characteristic of other legend and any historical event stories because it tend to change in order to suit the people of the place where it spread. Adjusting the story itself based on the level of knowledge of the people at the time it spread is also an occurring event to the urban legends. One example was the story of a woman killed by a spider nesting in her elaborate hairdo. More recent legends tend to reflect modern circumstances, like the story of people ambushed, anesthetized, and waking up minus one kidney, which was surgically removed for transplantation a story which folklorists refer to as "The Kidney Heist"