The beverage you linked is not rakija, and it’s not even similar.
Rakija is made from grapes, Vodka from potatoes. We don’t have enough potatoes to throw away
Similarly, whiskey means "water of life". Alchemists had aqua vitae, in Latin, with the same meaning, and the French eau-de-vie.
Is it different just in Croatia, or am I otherwise misinformed?
"Rakija" would usually be translated as "fruit brandy" (but also overlaps with grappa, and then there are Croatian varieties which throw a lot of herbs and flowers in there) whereas arak, rakı and friends are most in the category of pasties, ouzo and sambuca in their flavoring. Confusingly, the Cretan raki is grappa.
The other confusing thing is that most of these words (schnapps, vodka, arak, rakija) are generic words for distillates, not indicative of a style. Vodka can be made of almost anything, but in contrast to other styles, its heavy filtering and purification (basically leaving not much but ethanol and water) is what makes it "vodka", and where I'm skeptical that the Moldovan booze meets that description.
The local generic term for an alcoholic drink is different, but "vodka" is specifically used only for things that say "vodka" on the label pretty much everywhere between the Tatra Mountains and the Mediterranean.
Neither has the taste nor smell any resemblance with vodka, usually much higher quality drink compared to standard vodka (ie from plums you smell and taste plums very intensively, and its 100% from just the fruit, no marketing tricks). Also usually around 50-57% alcohol content compared to 38-40% of usual vodka. Each drink has their own name based on fruit its distilled from, plums are easiest and most common to make due to generous fermenting window and high sugar content of the fruit.
The tradition to make it at home is pretty strong for those who have gardens/houses with such trees, and those home products are of much higher taste quality than anything you can buy in any shop (once western world discover this I expect prices will skyrocket and move it into 'artisanal' category, how can anybody be satisfied with just good quality bland vodka is beyond me). It means given person collected fruits, let them ferment for very precise time for given fruit in vats, and then took it to local certified distillery, no blinding self-made moonshine which is a tool of desperate and very poor.
I can confirm this. When I lived in the Czech Republic I knew a local who made his own plum schnapps. He explicitly called it slivovice (and schnapps when I asked for the English name), not vodka.
Source: I'm originally from West Turkey.