Why doesn't anyone on 'The Walking Dead' call the zombies 'zombies'?

Last night was the "mid-season finale" (something that is becoming weirdly popular with TV shows now, and I don't like it...) of AMC's The Walking Dead.  I'm a huge fan of the program, but one thing about it irks me: Why don't any of the characters ever refer to the zombies as "zombies"?  The phrase most commonly used is "walkers," but the terms "biters," "roamers," "creepers," "eaters" and many others have been mentioned as well.

How is it possible that every single human being in The Walking Dead manage to go their entire lives without coming across the word "zombie"?  What's the deal?  Does the show take place in some sort of alternate parallel universe that is exactly the same as ours, except for the fact that in the history of time nobody ever once wrote a book about/made a movie with zombies?

And if that's the case, it's a pretty weird coincidence that the zombie apocalypse just so happened to occur in the world that oddly enough had no prior knowledge of zombies.  Bad break for those guys I guess...

Imagine if the Twilight series refused to use the word "vampire," how annoying would that be?


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