Talk:L. L. Zamenhof

Missing link

Jun 04, 2006 - Missing link! The link http://www.um.bialystok.pl/kultura/pomniki/zamenhof/index.html at the end of this article is a deadlock - Error 404

Name

Feb 25, 2002 - According to http://www.koshko.com/esperanto/index4.html, his Jewish name was Lazar Markovitch Zamenhof, but Russian Imperial laws at the time required everyone to have a Christian name, hence Ludovic Lazarus.

---

Does anyone know what Zamenhof's first two names actually were? They seem usually to be given in different forms, depending on the language being used. E.g., Ludoviko Lazaro in Esperanto, Louis-Lazare in French, etc. But what is the correct form? I've heard he was called Lazar as a child. --Zundark, 2001 Sep 14

He's name was Elizer Lazar Samenhof. His father was known like Zamenhof. Elizer was writting whith his grandfather from Lithuania. Grandfather ask him which name will he choose if he will be Polish (his family had very strong polish character, their writting in Polish and propably talking in Polish). Elizer answer that Ludwik. In "Internacia Lingvo" from 1887 he sign himself "Dr. Ludoviko Lazar Zamenhof" or "Dr. Esperanto".

---

My resources claim he is Polish, and his name is Lazarus Ludwig Zamenhof and he was born on Roberts birthday!! Way before he existed though.

---

Britannica says Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, so I think I'll use that. However, his surname wasn't really spelt Zamenhof either, that's just how he preferred to write it. It's often stated that he was Polish, but this is meaningless. Ethnically he was a Jew. The places he lived in (Białystok and Warsaw) are now in Poland, but at the time they were in the Russian Empire. His family were Russian-speaking. He called his homeland -- the area around Białystok -- Litovujo (that is, Lithuania). --Zundark, 2001 Sep 15.

Do not forget that Russian as the invaders, forced Poles to speak Russian at home. IT was illegal at jom to speak a langueage different than Russian, despite the fact they were Polish. They wanted to Rusinaze Poles and all the other ethnic groups around them.

Norum 13 jan 2007.

Ethnically Jew? THis is meaningless. Does he describe himself as Jew? A lot of Jews were Poles, as prove statistcis from Pre-War Poland (difference between number of citizens with Jewish religion and Jewish nationality is stunning). i noticed that some people think that you can be Jew and American, Jew and German, but if you are Jew in Poland, it seems that you just can't be Pole??

In time Zamenhof live there was no Poland, as it was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria. Warsaw was however part of Russia Empire called first Polish kingdom, and then ,,Privinslanskij kraj" (when Russia tried to destroy any memory about Poland). He died in Warsaw and for whoel his life he constantly returned to it. One of his first text translated was Pater Noster. OTOH he was buried on Jewish cemetery.

I first time that he created Esperanto to unite Jewish Diaspora. I always read that he (as he few times told) created this language, so every people could communicate with each other no matter of nationality or race.

Adolf Hitler wrote this in Mein Kampf. --Chuck SMITH

I don't know if he was Russian, Pole or whatever, but if you will put equation Jew(someone)=>!Pole(someone), then you will join army of endecja, who think the same, and for whom Korczak, Slonimski, Lesmian, Schulz etc were not Poles just because of their Jewish roots.

If you think that "ethnically a Jew" is meaningless, then you should do something about the Jews article, which starts "Jews are both a religion and an ethnicity". As far as I know, Zamenhof considered himself a Jew, and not a Pole. But, like his father, he didn't really believe in the Jewish religion. Jews can, of course, be Poles, but that doesn't mean Zamenhof was, especially as he was born in what he considered to be Lithuania. --Zundark, 2001 Dec 17

Most Jews in Poland have German or Russian names; I think this contributes to the way they have been alienated from the general Polish population, the name "Zamenhof" furthers this point.

There is an important fact that you have to bear in mind. Jewish family names sound German, because they were given by Austrian and Prussian state officials. It was done to force acculturation and facilitate administration, AFTER Polish state had lost some of its provinces to those countries (and finally independence). Sometimes, a spiteful clerk was giving names that sounded silly. I guess nobody would call himself: "Kanalgeruch" (smell-of-a-canal), or "Wanzenknicker" (bedbug-miser) - authentic names given to the Jews by E.T.A. Hoffman, a known writer of fables and a Prussian official. All a Jewish person could do in a case like this, was to bribe the clerk. So this is rather a story about German-Jewish lack of tolerance and alienation. --Oronárë (talk) 23:33, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

If he indeed considered himself Jew while ont considering himself Pole at the same time, (there are numerous examples when people did that), then you are right.

Sorry, but could someone just check whether he was or not considering himself a Jew/Pole/Lithuanian/Russian or whatever? And to what you've said, despite strict definitions, being a Jew may mean one of two: being a Judaist, being a Judaist AND a part of Jewish community. And I'm not going to check which one is strictly correct, cos until I stay confused it should explicitly said.

What about the name "Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof"? This is an English name of him.

—Your's sincerely, Soumya-8974 (talk) 05:21, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Removal

I removed the following sentence "He was also known as Dr. Esperanto, a pseudonym he used, meaning in the soon-to-be so-named language 'one who hopes', when publishing his work Lingvo Internacia, his first description of the language." because it says the same information that is already mentioned in the final paragraph "In 1887, the book titled as "D-ro Esperanto. Lingvo internacia. Antaŭparolo kaj plena lernolibro" (Dr. Hopeful. International Language. Foreword And Complete Textbook) was published." We don't need to repeat this fact twice. --Chuck SMITH

name & nationality (again)

The Vikipedio article [1] and discussion page state that LL Zamenhof was given the Hebrew name Eliezer, which in Russian was Lejzer [English Lazarus, Esperanto Lazaro]. Legally, he had to go by the Russian version of his name. This seems to have something to do with needing to have a "Christian" name, but of course Christian names are mostly Jewish in origin, so in effect the law required everyone to have a Russian-language name. Later, when he was at University in Moscow he chose a new name, Ludwik, to honor Francis Lodwick/Lodowyck, who published a conlang in 1652 that Zamenhof had read about. Only in 1901, when his brother Leon started signing "L Zamenhof", did he retrieve the name Lejzer/Lazaro and start signing LL Zamenhof. There seems to be some confusion as to which L was which, and Zamenhof himself didn't seem to place much importance on it.

As for the "Markovich", that's a patronymic, not a given name. His father's Hebrew name was Mordechai, but he prefered Mark among Russians, so in Russian, LL Zamenhof would be called Markovich. (It's polite in Russian to refer to someone by their patronymic rather than their given name.)

Sorry for repeating the info from the link, but I don't know if everyone here controls Esperanto. Also, the Vikipedio page makes an error in not recognizing that Lejzer is simply the Russian form of Eliezer.

In Zamenhof's own words he was not Polish, but a Russian Jew (ruslanda hebreo). His home languages were Russian (father) and Yiddish (mother). I don't know about the Lithuanian stuff; the Vikipedio page claims his family was Latvian, not Lithuanian. I don't know the justification for that. It could be that his family traced its origins to the Baltics, but just as possible that Zamenhof saw his homeland of Bialistok as historically part of the Lithuanian (= Polish!) Empire rather than the Russian.

Regardless, Zamenhof is a national figure today in Poland, with a Zamenhof Park, several Zamenhof Streets, etc. Esperanto is quite popular in Poland, and a point of pride, and Poles have a correspondingly strong influence on the Esperanto movement. Perhaps that's why Zamenhof's most often said to have been Polish. --kwami 05:14, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

He says he spoke "Russian, Polish, and German" fluently. kwami 23:41, 2005 July 9 (UTC)

Is it necessary to state this at all? Why not just start off with "Zamenhof ... was a Jewish ophthalmologist", or better yet just "Zamenhof .. was an ophthalmologist." The information on his ethnicity, language and place of birth all appear in the next few paragraphs. Why not just remove this bone of contention? MFNickster 04:09, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Go for it! kwami 05:37, 2005 August 26 (UTC)

The Esperanot wiki's been expanded with a link to "litva". Litova is 'Lithuanian' in the ethnic sense; litva is Lithuanian in the historical Grand Duchy of Lithuania (modern Lithuania, Belarus, & Ukraine) sense. The article says that Z's family was litva. kwami 21:33, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

His family name was written Samenhof in German orthography; Zamenhof is an Esperantized spelling.

Yes, but which way did he write it? in Russian, Yiddish, and Polish? In different Cyrillic-written languages, you see it as both Заменгоф and Заменхоф, and in Yiddish Wikipedia it’s זאמענהאף. I’m inclined to think that’s somehow “right,” as ה isn’t typically a Yiddish letter —Wiki Wikardo 09:39, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Polish...?

He was polish-russian of Jewish roots.

Thank you for joining us!

Do you have any evidence that Zamenhof was either ethnically Polish or identified himself as being Polish? He is commonly said to be Polish, but that is perhaps because he was born and lived much of his life in what is now Poland. However, it seems that his native languages were Russian and Yiddish, and that he identified as being Russian and Jewish, and of having Latvian ancestry. I have yet to see any evidence that he saw himself or his family as being Polish, that Polish was his native language, or that he ever had Polish nationality or citizenship. Since Białystok was part of Russia, not Poland, while he lived; his main language was Russian, not Polish; and he never seems to have claimed to be Polish, I doubt that "Polish" is an appropriate ethnic description.

As you can see from the previous discussion, we decided to not explicitly describe him as any ethnicity, chiefly because people keep insisting that he is Polish without providing any direct evidence. kwami 19:25, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Ironically Zamenhof wanted to transcend nationalism. So the question how did he identify himself is beside the point. He was a citizen of the world. As he lived in an area which is now Poland and which was predominantly Polish at the time (there being no independent Poland), it is not wrong to call him Polish. Arguably the Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe formed a distinct ethnic group, and anti-semites should not deter us from identifying someone as ethnically Jewish. To describe him as "Russian" is misleading as, though he was a subject (not citizen) of the Russian Empire, he would not have been seen as a Russian ("Great Russian") at the time. Internationalism forever!--Jack Upland 01:16, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

So, if he'd lived on the Navajo reservation, it wouldn't be wrong to call him Navajo? Regardless of whether he considered himself a citizen of the world, ethnicity is one of those tidbits of trivia that people come to encyclopedias for. He called himself a "Russian Jew", was a Jew and spoke Russian natively, so I guess that makes him, what, a Russian Jew? kwami 02:58, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget Zamenhof talking also that "he lives and works at Poland and he will die there like his parents" so he is "son of Polish land". He wrote that words on Esperanto just like this telegram where he wrote that people can talk about him he is "Russian Jew". See that "Russian Jew" he wrote "Judo el Ruslando" so Rusa (russian) lando (country). If he wrote that "la Rusa Judo" it could be translate "Russian Jew". He sad also he is from Lithuania, which was for 1939 a Polish state. (pardonu pro miaj eraroj).

Ludwik Łazarz Zamenhof estis la Polulo. Certe kelkaj biografistoj parolas ke lia unua lingvo, kaj same la lingvo de lia hejmo estis rusa. Gxi ne estas la vero cxar Elizer (lia juda nomo) skribis al sia familio unue en pola lingvo. Malgraux li estis Judo li parolis pri sin ke li estas la "judo el Ruslando" kaj "filo de pola tero". Lois Christophe Zamenhof la nepo de Ludwik Łazarz interpretas en "La Zamenhofa Strato" gxin rimarkante ke vorto "Ruslando" intencas al la lando kaj la frazo "filo de pola tero" devas tial esti komprenata kiel opiniado sin kiel Polo. Lois primemorigxas ke en la hejmo de lia familio oni parolis en pola lingvo. Ludwik Łazarz Zamenhof parolis do ke li estas la filo de pola tero, ke lia gepatroj laboris por tiu lando kaj por tiu lando mortis kaj ke li ankaux laboris kaj mortos en Pollando. Li parolis ankaux pri si ke li devenas el Litvo. Litvo estis antaux la okupacioj de Pruslando, Auxstralno kaj Ruslando la unu lando kun Pollando. Ankaux post 1918 jaro Litvo, Ukraino kaj Bjaloruslando estis la sferoj de la Pollando. Pollando havis la karakteron internacian cxar certe tie forkuris la judoj, tataroj kaj multuloj- tial la Pollando estas nomata Rzeczpospolita (respubliko, la "gxeneralajxo", "universalajxo"). Tial multuloj pri gxin batalas gxis 1918 jaro kaj poste.

Here's what I've seen on this: He identified his family as Lithuanian Jews; he was a Jew from Russia. Russian was his native language, and it was the language he preferred when a young man. He was quite proud of the Russian language. However, Polish was the language of his neighborhood, and as he grew older he spoke more Polish than Russian. When he married and had children, his family spoke Polish, and Polish was the native language of his children. That's rather like a Russian immigrant family in Poland becoming assimilated to being Polish, but while politically still being in Russia - how do we give a simple answer to that? Someone just repeated the simplistic claim that he was Polish, just because it said so in the EB. kwami (talk) 17:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

In a situation like this where someone's ethnic designation seems to be controversial, it might be best just to give information, as we do now, about residence, languages spoken, religion, etc. without saying "he was x." --Cam (talk) 18:17, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Here's from the 1911 EB: "Its author was a Russian physician, Dr L. Zamenhof, born in 1859 at Bielostok ..." kwami (talk) 04:22, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Kwami is correct. Zamenhof was a Russian Jew. Please read the section 3. Persona deveno. http://www2.math.uu.se/~kiselman/zamenhof.pdf Please do not change his nationality to Polish unless unless you have evidence. Klivo (talk) 06:56, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

The issues around Zamenhof's nationality and ethnicty stem from contributors that do not understand the Partitions of Poland and the history of the Ashkenazi Jews. This is similar to African-America. They were not born in Africa but that doesn't mean their origin is erased. Zamenhof was a Russian Jew born in Bialystok whichis now present-day Poland. This common confusion is also covered in the book Zamenhof: The Life, Works, and Ideas of the Author of Esperanto By Aleksander Korĵenkov · 2010

If you are not familiar with the Partitions of Poland. the Russian Partition, and Ashkenazi Jewish history, please do not add unneccesary complexity to an already complex subject. Erasing Zamenhof's Jewishness is anti-semetic and should be included in the article regardless of what "country" he was from -- borders change - ancestry does not. TheTypingKat (talk) 19:56, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

TheTypingKat you're replying to a message from 9 years ago, that was itself a message append to a thread from 2007. You may be better off reading the RFC below that is from last year, and starting a new section. - LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:39, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

A and א

א does not represent the sound "A" at all in Hebrew. It is a silent letter, which can represent any vowel. The sentance about Zamenhof's name in Hebrew is very confusing, and even gratuitous if it is modified to be correct.

The article doesn't say that א represents the Hebrew sound [a], it says that א is the Hebrew letter A. I presume from the article that the signs are bilingual, with Hebrew א. זמנהוף transliterated as English A. Zamenhof. kwami 05:17, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

The reason I put it there was because there was a paragraph earlier about how Jerusalem street signs 'mistakenly' wrote A. Zamenhof, which is misleading/incorrect - this is not a mistake, it's intentional, and with the א/A I explained why. Feel free to re-word the sentence to explain it better, but the core idea should remain. -- Ynhockey 10:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

The Hebrew concept of letters is quite different to that of English. Many people mistakenly say that א is the Hebrew version of A. This is plainly wrong. Also, א is not a silent letter (although it is silent in certain circumstances, and although not all speakers are careful enough to always pronounce it even when it is not supposed to be silent): it represents a glottal stop. The writing A. Zamenhof is indeed a mistake - and it's not even remotely the worst one one can find on Zamenhof St. signs throughout Israel! 188.169.229.30 (talk) 00:04, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Belorusian Langue

My little NON orginal research, throught wikipedia pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarusian_language#1980s-2000s "The largest centre of Belarusian cultural activity, in the Belarusian language, outside Belarus is in the Polish province of Białystok (Беласток in Belarusian), which is home to a long-established Belarusian minority."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_phonology#Orthography_and_pronunciation "This inventory is rather similar to that of Polish, but is especially close to Belarusian, which was historically important to the creator of Esperanto.

The main innovations, compared to Belarusian, are,

the absence of palatalization in Esperanto, although this was present in Proto-Esperanto (nacjes, now nacioj "nations"; familje, now familio "family") and arguably survives marginally in the affectionate suffixes -njo and -ĉjo, and in the interjection tju!; the lack of a phonemic affricate /dz/, although again there are remnants in words such as edzo "a husband". "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_alphabet#Belarusian ŭ = belorusian cyrillic ў

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._L._Zamenhof#Life "Zamenhof was born on December 15, 1859 in the town of Białystok (in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire) to parents of Lithuanian Jewish descent. The town's population was made up of three major ethnic groups: Poles, Belarusians, and a large group of Yiddish-speaking Jews."

You can't say that his biographers said that he spoke Belorussian just because it's reasonable to think he did. That's fraud. kwami (talk) 00:33, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

There's a statement about Belorussian language not being considered as different from Russian. This is incorrect. Belorussian language is ( and was at that time) quite different from Russian although they share the same alphabet. Phonetically it is somewhat in the middle between Russian and Polish. I speak all three, so I can tell, this statement is quite strong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.201.252.91 (talk) 14:17, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Place of his death

I have changed the flag icon for the place of his death. At that point, as someone has noted, Bialystok was part of the Regency Kingdom of Poland, but it was not an independent country yet. It was a satellite state of the German Empire. The flag used here was called Kongresowka which was a flag of the Congress Poland which ceased to exist in 1915. I have changed it to the flag of the German Empire.

Norum 25 Jan 2007.

Lichen

It seems the genus name Zamenhofia (named by Claude Roux) is now considered a junior synonym to Porina by the British Lichen Society.[2], i.e. they use Porina instead of Zamenhofia. --Cam 02:46, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Aided by a Poor Knowledge?

Read the following sentence (from the article) carefully: "Apart from his parents' native languages Russian and Yiddish and his adopted language Polish, his lingustics attempts were also aided by his mastering of German, a good passive understanding of Latin, Hebrew and French, and a rather poor knowledge of Greek, English and Italian."

Now, do you think he was actually aided by a poor knowledge of Greek, English and Italian? I think not. It seems what someone is trying to say, is that he was aided by his knowledge of languages; and that his knowledge of these languages was poor in comparison to the others which he spoke well. I do not know, as I am not an expert on Esperanto, but many of the contributors seem to have done some good research, and someone who knows more would do well to re-word this. (Sbutler (talk) 08:09, 21 April 2008 (UTC))

Belarussian?

If Belorussian was not considered a separate language from Russian at the time, could his father's native language actually have been Belorussian? That might explain the strong influence of Belarussian on Eo phonology. kwami (talk) 09:00, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Belorussian WAS considered as a separate language from Russian, and it is a quite different language.

Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof is a traditional Jewish name, and Belostok was a jewish town at that time. Most population was Jewish and spoke Yiddish.

Jews on that territory had more tendency to mix Yiddish with Polish and /or Belorussian than Russian.

It is unlikely that Russian was his first language. Most likely it was Yiddish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.201.252.91 (talk) 14:28, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The preceding unsigned comment was mis-indented with spaces, making it preformatted with each paragraph on a single line running off the right margin. I've inserted colons for proper Wikipedia indentation. --Thnidu (talk) 06:48, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Ludvic

I just noticed we've had the odd spelling "Ludvic" at the top of the article for a year or so. Does anyone have a cite for that spelling? If not what should we change it to? --Cam (talk) 20:00, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. "Lazarus" is of course the English form, and AFAIK the most common English form for the other name is "Ludwig", so I changed it to that. The official form early on would've been Russian Ljud(o)vik, later on Polish Ludwik, and we could also use the German, so I think "translating" into English is not a bad idea. kwami (talk) 20:58, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, cool, thanks. I fixed the name over the photo, too. --Cam (talk) 01:20, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Zionism

A user just removed Zamenhof's designation as a Zionist. While I'm not an expert on the subject, there's this article in Esperanto which may shed light on the issue. Does anyone here care to at least partially translate? -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 21:41, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I've been looking at the article by N.Z. Maimon in Esperanto, and have added a couple of paragraphs based on info from it. The title of that article refers, correctly, to a Zionist period in Zamenhof's life. In view of the reservations Zamenhof later expressed about Zionism or anything resembling it, I agree that it's not appropriate to begin our artcle by describing him without qualification as a Zionist. Kalidasa 777 (talk) 03:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Lejzer or Łazarz?

Hi there, I've always read about the second name of Zamenhof being Lejzer, not Łazarz. I couldn't find an appropriate footnote (nor any discussion item in this page) which clarifies to me the reasons of this choice. Can anybody explain from where the spelling Łazarz was taken?

I would also support renaming the article to match the full name of Zamenhof, whichever it is. He used to call himself L. L., but he is equally famous with his full name, which for that reason (I think) is the most used in the other linguistic versions of Wikipedia. --WinstonSmith (talk) 10:22, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Polishness redux

The article in the Esperanto wikipedia puts it quite nicely at one point. Let me paraphrase what it says:

Zamenhof was ethnically Polish (he lived among (other) Poles, spoke mostly Polish, read and translated Polish literature, was friends with Poles - and, to add another thing, spoke Polish with his children); this does not prove that he was inwardly Polish. His perspective was almost completely cosmopolitan. Calling him a "Polish oculist" or a "Polish linguist" is very reductive, but not incorrect.

So far eo.wikipedia.org. This seems to be a much more nuanced (and non-nationalistic) discussion than the wrangling about labels that sometimes goes around in en.wikipedia. Perhaps we can take that as a starting point if the issue arises again?

Let me offer my own commentary on the above. The description of Zamenhof's life will do for the second half or last two thirds of his life; his initial environment was less Polish than the manner he lived his life in. Second, from all we can tell about his actual feelings on Polish matters, his national sentiments - in so far as, given that he was an internationalist, one can call his feelings something of the sort - were attached to Litwo, rather than to the notion of Poland that became dominant with time in the twentieth century. See, again, the article in the Esperanto wikipedia.

Litwo was the eastern part of pre-partition Poland (properly called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). It isn't just that an attachment to Litwo in particular was common in people born there - it is also a matter of two different conceptions of Poland. Here Zamenhof was not alone, but, rather, in line with a nineteenth-century and early-twentieth century strain of Polish(-Lithuanian) patriotism that was actually opposed to what most people would call Polish nationalism. Thus, the Polish national poem starts with the line "Lithuania! My fatherland!", and Piłsudski called himself a Lithuanian of Polish culture. Some English speakers should be familiar with Czesław Miłosz as a late representative of this strain of thought. Feketekave (talk) 16:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yiddish Language

People today mostly think in imaginations of today. According to all reports, I've heard from my ancestors, before WW2 allmost all Jews in Poland felt as members of an own Jew nation and their spoken language in the most part of Eastern Europe was Yiddish. Yiddish is not to confuse with the today in Israel spoken Hebrew. Germans can understand the most of the Yiddish language, but they can't understand Hebrew. But Germans couldn't read Yiddish newspapers at all, for they were printed with Hebrew letters.

As well as the Jews, Russians, Polish and Germans felt as members of their own nation in Bialystok too. In the time of Ludwig Zamenhof there were four main ethnic groups there. In the economic crisis after WW1 the Germans predominantly - except for a few thousands - left the city. Before WW2 Yiddish was the most spoken language in Bialystok, spoken by about the half of the population there.--Henrig (talk) 13:44, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

People today think in the imaginations of today; however, these imaginations have not only a tendency to project the present onto the past, but also a tendency to project the more distant past - idealised and simplified - onto the more recent past.

I would support what you just said about "almost all Jews" at the time "before WW2" if you were referring to the first half of the nineteenth century. As a statement about the time of Zamenhof's birth, it is certainly truer than as a statement about, say, the time of Zamenhof's death. At the same time, even in 1859, the process of integration - with its shifts and ambiguities in culture and the notion of self - had already started. In particular, it had already started in the case of Zamenhof's family: the household he grew up in was at least bilingual, and his early environment was apparently trilingual. It may be that this was not an average situation for families in Bialystok having Yiddish as their language or one of their languages: Zamenhof's father can probably best be described as a Belorussian schoolteacher. It would be interesting to see what has been written on the matter of how different Zamenhof's background was from other people in various groups in his own city.

There is a report by a patient in which Zamenhof worked in his later years. He states that Zamenhof tried to speak to him in Yiddish, but that it came out without any specifically Yiddish words. This is not surprising, as it is my impression that Zamenhof read (and translated) a great deal of German literature, and seems not to have demonstrated a strong interest in the Yiddish language after his early twenties. Here's the link: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele/vol6.081

Feketekave (talk) 10:10, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

School?

The Polish version of VI High School - King Sigismund Augustus says that he attended that school whereas here it says Warsaw. Can it be confirmed or denied that he went here? Victuallers (talk) 15:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

The article says the school was founded in 1915 so unless they are referring to a predecessor of the school it isn't possible. In a letter to Alfred Michaux in 1905, Zamenhof said he attended "la Bialistokan realan gimnazion" (the Bialystok Realschule) from 1869 until his family moved to Warsaw in 1873. --Cam (talk) 16:01, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, I found this page which explains that the old Realschule was in the building that is now High School VI, so it is true that Zamenhof attended school there. --Cam (talk) 16:16, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Thats brilliant ... there appear to be three dates I can find from 1805 to 1915 depending on the source. Unfortunately I don't speak Polish and the auto translations are ambiguous. I think that they say 1915, but the former school was here too and that started in 1805. However I'm much closer with your help

! Victuallers (talk) 16:23, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Wording

There seems to be a conflict between users User:Jacurek and User:Gilisa as to whether Zamenhof's should be said to have been born "to parents of Jewish descent" or "in a Jewish family". To judge from his comments to edits in this and other pages, it seems that User:Gilisa believes that a person cannot be said to be of Jewish descent unless he belongs to another religion.

This seems odd to me. It also seems to me that we shouldn't have a dispute about the opening sentence at all, given that his background is described in much more detail in the rest of the opening paragraph. The point is not that Zamenhof was not in many ways from some sort of archetypical X family (probably nobody ever was, for any value of X). The issue is that our principal aim should be to describe the subjects of our articles, not claim them for one category or the other. This principle alone, if clearly stated, could avoid many (edit) wars here and elsewhere. (Fortunately there is no war here yet.) Feketekave (talk) 14:37, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Just a quick note: User:Jacurek merely changed the original wording from "of Lithuanian-Jewish descent" to "of Jewish descent". See further up in this talk page for Polish-Lithuanian issues. Feketekave (talk) 14:45, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

And user Feketekave delete any mention to Zamenhof Jewish backgroud in the article-an action that was not taken by User: Jacurek, nor by me. As I was involved in several discussion on this matter I can tell for sure that to many editors the wording "Jewish descent" refers to one whose parents have converted from Judaism to some other religion. "Into a Jewish family" is farily neutral and correct here. In fact, in a discussion you had with Avi and John you was exposed to similar line of arguments[3], so I cant see why mine is "odd". Feketekave, you absolutely have no reason to revert this.--Gilisa (talk) 20:04, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

User:Gilisa has evidently not bothered to read what I or others have had to say. He should not have reverted while his behaviour was being reported and dealt with here [4]. As is typical for him, he starts his paragraph with an untrue description of other people's edits. (No mention of Jewish background? What is Yiddish, then?) Feketekave (talk) 14:03, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Youre using dishonest tactic, and ad hominum attacks instead of dealing with the facts. Yiddish is not deirctly equal to being born to a Jewish family and I guess that it's common sense that when one live in a city that 30% of its people are Jews who speak Yiddish, he may at the least know few words (or may if he is gifted as Zamanhof). You are letting yourself too much I must say, Implying that I'm no less than a liar -it won't work for you. Your behavior was reported as well, and if so you are not allowed to revert as well--Gilisa (talk) 17:51, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

This has been reported as well; the fact that you answer charges with charges means nothing. The text as it stood and stands says: "[he] also spoke his mother's Yiddish natively". Not picked up from the neighbours, then. Feketekave (talk) 18:18, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Feketekave, I realy don't care waht you report on. You are using other conflicts I had with other editors to make yourself "naturally right". I realy careless about your baseless accusations and I have no intention to be dragged to further fruitless discussions with you. If you want to start from the begininng than I've also no problem with that. How ever you may look on it Zamenhof was born into Jewish family, it doesn't mean that he was religious or even saw himself as Jewish (which he did) and it have strong relevance for his life and work. I realy get it hard to undersatnd what is that so bothring you with simple uninterpretated reference that he was born into Jewish family (it is a very common reference on most wikipedia articles) -if you give satisfying explenation than I will have no problem to revert it myself. Trust me on that.--Gilisa (talk) 18:37, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I found this discussion to be overly aggressive, I'm willing to start a disscussion. I don't think that your last edit was right but I'm willing to discuss it from the begininng, with clean hands and mind, just to give my cease fire offer validity.--Gilisa (talk) 18:58, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

He is a wonderful man —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.215.104.167 (talk) 18:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Date

Dates here, are in the Julian calendar of Russia or the Gregorian calendar? --Error (talk) 01:42, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Dates are in the Gregorian calendar. He was born on 3 December in the Julian calendar (source: 1933-34 Enciklopedio de Esperanto). --Cam (talk) 04:45, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Name inconsistences (again!)

Above his picture, you can read the name Ludwik Łazarz Zamenhof, which I think is also the one the polish article uses (cf. pl:Ludwik Zamenhof, and since he was born in Poland, the Polish should know it best, shouldn't they!? BUT in the English article you read Lazar Ludwik Zamenhof. Ah so Ludwik turned out to be his second name? Confusion, confusion... -andy 212.114.254.107 (talk) 09:52, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

There is an effort by several groups to claim him as one of their own. But ethnicity and nationality can be slippery concepts.

He called himself "L. L. Zamenhof". No-one knows which L was which. If he'd used the Polish form with Ł, that would solve the problem, but he didn't. — kwami (talk) 19:59, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

That, and he wasn't born in Poland, but in the Russian Empire (there wasn't even a country named Poland at the time). --JorisvS (talk) 20:09, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move. Jafeluv (talk) 07:13, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

---

L. L. Zamenhof → Ludwik Zamenhof — Google Book results:

• Ludovic Zamenhof Jew Esperanto: About 153 results
• Ludwig Zamenhof Jew Esperanto: About 301 results
• LL Zamenhof Jew Esperanto: About 348 results (same for L. L.)
• Ludwik Zamenhof Jew Esperanto: About 668 results

Also:

• Ludovic Zamenhof physician Esperanto: About 29 results
• Ludwig Zamenhof physician Esperanto: About 103 results
• LL Zamenhof physician Esperanto: About 157 results
• Ludwik Zamenhof physician Esperanto: About 175 results

Lazar(us) variant is o less popular, only yielding about a third of results.

As such I'd like to propose to move this article to Ludwik Zamenhof. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 03:19, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support as English idiom and usage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:46, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose This is not the right way to do a hit count. Here is an (ultrasmoothed) ngram. There are many more hits for "LL" than for "Ludwik". There are also more hits for "Ludwig" than for "Ludwik". "Ludwik" gives him a Polish identity that he didn't have. Esperanto is what he is famous for, so I'd call him "Ludoviko Zamenhof", which is his Esperanto name. Kauffner (talk) 04:10, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Ngram is interesting, but I wonder about smoothing. Using 9 instead of 50 gives a rather different version. The default somoothing of 3 seems consistent with the 50, but I wonder why are the general results different from those with keywords above. It is possible that the general (ngram results) are influenced by spurious hits. And indeed, following the link the the "LL Zamenhof" English search from ngrams reveals some problems (I cannot link it here as mediawiki breaks Google links with quotations in them, you'll have to do so from an ngram page). But in the first 10 results I see two worrying trends: citations (often using abbreviated form of the name) and worse, non-English works. Google had always had issues with determining the language of the work; this is why my search above used keywords for control. On the 10 results page I see 5 (!) non English, I am guessing Esperanto. Unless you revise the ngram results to incorporate the control words, I'd suggest we treat the graph with caution. Lastly, I don't understand why you argue that Zamenhof didn't have a Polish identity. He had a multicultural identity, certainly, but the two most importants parts of it were Polish and Jewish (do a Google Book search on Zamenhof + ("Polish Jew" vs "Russian Jew" vs "Lithuanian Jew/Litvak"). I did so a few days ago, and Polish Jew outnumbers the others by 4:1 or more. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:41, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Ngram doesn't use the entire Google books archive. The foreign language stuff, periodicals, and low quality OCR material are taken out.[5] Google Books was designed to find results, not create hit counts. There doesn't seem to be another "LL Zamenhof" who turns up in the results, so no real need for control terms. Besides Zamenhof Esperanto is already unambiguous. Putting in "Jew" is obviously messing up the count. Kauffner (talk) 09:44, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Encyclopedia Britannica describes him as Polish [6] other either Polish or Polish Jew as well. This is who he was, a Polish Jew, living on the territory of the partitioned Commonwealth. I also don't understand the "Polish identity" issue. If not Polish Jews then who? I'm sure he was aware of the history of his of the lands he lived in. He could gain that knowledge at the Warsaw University where he graduated from.--Jacurek (talk) 18:24, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

He was a Russian Jew, as he said himself. AFAIK his kids were raised Polish.

BTW, we've been over the nationality thing many times. Pls discuss here before making wholesale changes to the article. — kwami (talk) 19:45, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose He is not called "Ludwik" in English. — kwami (talk) 19:45, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Gee, just 200 books disagree with you. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:05, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

B-Class Review

Needs more in-line references, some grammar checking. Otherwise close to B-class. Ajh1492 (talk) 17:37, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Languages

The current version states: "His father was a teacher of German, and he also spoke that language fluently, though not as comfortably as Yiddish." (the statement is unsourced)

This is possibly dubious. The following is a discussion in the archives of a mailing list of what are apparently Yiddish enthusiasts or scholars:

http://mendele.commons.yale.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/TxtArchive/vol06/vol06081.txt

See, in particular, the second message, which implies that the situation is the exact opposite. A Yiddish speaker who had seen Zamenhof as a patient expressed surprise that Zamenhof had ever worked on a Yiddish grammar (as he indeed did, in his youth). The quotes from the patient say (note - I speak German but no Yiddish; I am however pretty confident that I am getting this right) that Zamenhof had spoken what he meant to be Yiddish to him (the patient spoke little Polish), but that he really spoke a "German" Yiddish; "not one time did he speak a really Yiddish word."

Other bibliographical details suggest some Yiddish spoken at home (by his mother), German learned in town and/or in school, and a constant contact with German literature.

Thus, it would seem better to say simply "His father was a teacher of German, and he also spoke that language fluently." or even "His father was a teacher of German, and he also spoke that language fluently, to the extent that it may have affected his command of Yiddish as a separate linguistic variety. [source as above]".

(Note to people who have not spent too much time reading up on Central-European language issues: "Yiddish" is really one of several labels to cover a large spectrum of Germanic dialects spoken in the nineteenth century (and before, and partly after) mainly by traditional followers of the Jewish religion in Slavic countries. (Other common labels included what translates as "German" and, sadly, "jargon".) These dialects had some Slavic influences (sometimes significant) and, if I understand correctly, a few Hebrew words (with a much higher proportion in some registers). There were efforts to standardize it in the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century, sometimes involving efforts to increase the distance from standard German or remove Slavic or Hebrew words (depending on the political inclination of the people involved).) Feketekave (talk) 10:32, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Infobox entries

With all due respect to everybody involved in identity politics in any form: it would be best if both the (uncommon) "Ethnicity" entry and the "Nationality" entry were removed. These are just too controversial, especially in this case, given the intersection of Polish, Russian, and (post)-"Jewish" categories.

The issues are already partially dealt with in the article, in what is now approaching some level of objectivity. (As for the quotation marks above: Zamenhof does not seem to have been a supporter of the Jewish religion (proposing to replace it by something else, twice), and he stated that "the Jewish people" had long ceased to exist [[7]].)

Once this article starts including more content, it would seem fair to have a section on his complex relation to Polish issues, just as there is now a section on his complex relation to Judaic issues. Zamenhof's Polishness (to the extent that such a thing exists) was perhaps not completely unambiguous, but the article now goes arguably too far by avoiding the issue entirely. Feketekave (talk) 10:44, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

On "including more content" - the articles in Esperanto- and French-language Wikipedia are far more complete than this one, and provide a better balance of issues. Feketekave (talk) 10:51, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Nationality (again again)

Sources do in fact refer to him as Polish:

"asked the congress organisers to refer to him as a "son of the Polish land""

"Polish linguist and creator of Esperanto"

"Zamenhof's mother-tongue was Russian, but his ordinary personal language was Polish."

"Although educated in a Russian school, Zamenhof predominately used polish in daily conversation."

"When he conceived Esperanto in the 1870s, Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, a Polish ophthalmologist..."

"Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof, Polish physician, philologist, and creator of Esperanto."

"Dr. LL Zamenhof was a Polish physician who spent most of his life in Warsaw, Poland"

"Dr. Lazarus Ludwig Zamenhof, Polish linguist and physician, who created Esperanto"

"Zamenhof, Ludwig Lazar (1859-1917). Polish linguist and creator of Esperanto."

... and I could keep going... VolunteerMarek 05:05, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Nationality is a product of identity. Z identified himself as a Russian Jew. We can certainly note that Poland claims him as one of their own. — kwami (talk) 20:49, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

The above sources don't state that "Poland claims him as one of their own". They state that he was Polish and that he referred to himself as "son of the Polish land".VolunteerMarek 23:47, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

If there is something we can all agree on, it is that he called himself different things at different times, not just because (as he himself described at times) his attitudes evolved, but also because the meaning of "Russian", "Jew" (or "Hebrew") and "Pole" tended to shift during his lifetime. On the last issue - there's a can of worms coming out of the Litwo/Poland ambiguity - it's familiar to any student of Polish history, even if it seems quaint or odd to other people.

I think it would be constructive not to attach any national labels to somebody who was an archetypical internationalist, and to discuss, if anything, his (very mixed) cultural background instead, as exactly that - a background, not a foreground. Feketekave (talk) 14:47, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Details about the name

There are quite a few details provided on the Zamenhof page:

• Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, aka Ludvic Lazarus (Ludwik Lejzer, Ludwik Łazarz) Zamenhof (born Yiddish: אֱלִיעֶזֶר "לײזער" לֵוִי זאַמענהאָף, Eliezer "Leyzer" Levi Zamenhof, German: Ludwig (aka Levi) Lazarus Samenhof, Hebrew: אליעזר לודוויג (לייזער) (לאזארו לודוביקו) זמנהוף, Russian: Лю́двик Ла́зарь "Лейзер" Маркович Заменго́ф; 1859, Białystok, Russian Poland - 1917, Warszawa), eye doctor, philologist, and the inventor of Esperanto

I think it would be good to incorporate them in this article as well! 188.169.229.30 (talk) 00:18, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Nationality

Dear Klivo

These are my references:

• http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091215-ll-zamenhof-google-doodle-esperanto-150th-birthday/
• http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/655640/LL-Zamenhof
• http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/ludwigzamenhof.html
• https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludoviko_Lazaro_Zamenhof
• http://www.inyourpocket.com/poland/L.-L.-Zamenhof_71267f
• http://real-life-heroes-and-good-guys.wikia.com/wiki/L._L._Zamenhof

If you would like I can include 50 other sources that ALL state he was Polish. Even Russian Wikipedia states that he was not Russian only a Jew working on Russian territory. Therefore we can consider him as Polish-Jewish with Russian citizenship!

Oliszydlowski, User talk:Oliszydlowski 17 December, 2013 (UTC)

Well, it's really more complicated than that. Zamenhof himself stated that his native language was "Russian" (which would mean Belarusian because the two were not distinguished at the time). Later he gravitated more and more to using Polish, which became the native language of his children. So, was he Polish? Not by ancestry nor by his native language. But he did acquire Polish nationality later. --JorisvS (talk) 09:59, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

First of all, the source cited to establish Zamenhof as Polish is: http://www.biographybase.com/biography/zamenhof_l_l.html

At the bottom of that page you will see:

"This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article L. L. Zamenhof."

(Ooops)

Secondly, here is Zamenhof's birth certificate, in Russian, of course: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LL_Zamenhof_birth_certificate.jpg

In a letter to Thorsteinsson in 1901, he wrote (my translation):

"Mi father language is Russian; but now I speak more Polish, and I call myself not [ethnically] Russian, but a citizen of the Russian state."

(Mia gepatra lingvo estas la rusa; sed nun mi parolas pli pole, kaj mi nomas min ne ruso sed Rusujano.)

(Letero 1901 03 08 al Th. Thorsteinsson, Kopenhago, ˆci tie citita lau ̆ Zamenhof 1929:523)

http://www2.math.uu.se/~Kiselman/zamenhof.pdf

In a letter to the congress committee for the Cracow Esperanto Congress (1912), he wrote (my translation):

"In case you absolutely must speak about my person, you can call me a son of a Polish land (because no one can deny, that the land in which both my parents lie, and in which I constantly work and intend to work until my death, is my home, although I'm not a nationalist), but don't call me a Pole, so that no one may say, that in order to accept honours, I put on the mask of a people to which I do not belong."

"En la okazo, se Vi nepre bezonas paroli pri mia persono, Vi povas min nomi filo de pola lando (ĉar neniu povas nei, ke la tero, en kiu kuŝas ambaŭ miaj gepatroj 1kaj sur kiu mi konstante laboras kaj intencas labori ĝis mia morto, estas mia hejmo, kvankam mi ne estas naciisto), sed ne nomu min polo por ke oni ne diru, ke mi - por akcepti honorojn - metis sur min maskon de popolo, al kiu mi ne apartenas."

(Letero al la Loka Kongresa Komitato de la Krakova Kongreso (1912); ĉi tie citita laŭ Maimon 1978:203.)

http://www2.math.uu.se/~Kiselman/zamenhof.pdf

Is there any evidence that Zamenhof acquired Polish nationality?

Klivo (talk) 17:31, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Further, Poland gained independence on November 11th, 1918, nineteeen months after Zamenhof's death.

In summary: Zamenhof was born into a Jewish family, in an area which was in Russian territory. He was a citizen of the Russian state (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/LL_Zamenhof_birth_certificate.jpg). His home languages were Russian and Yiddish. He identified himself as a Russian Jew. He could not have become a citizen of Poland, because there was no Polish state before his death.

If you are wondering why Zamenhof is often identified as Polish, even by encyclopedias, please read the paper by RÁTKAI Árpád:

"Abstract Lazar Markovich Zamenhof (1859-1917), a Russian Jew Lazar Markovich Zamenhof (1859-1917) born in Bielostock (Grodno governorate, Russia), in 1887 initiatiated the International Language under the pen-name Dr. Esperanto. In the 20th century his name, pen- names, birthplace, etnic identity and his initiative were changed for various reasons, resulting in false information beeing published in [many] encyclopedias and other media. In the article we exhhibit the false assertions and compare them with facts."

RÁTKAI Árpád (ratkai12@t-online.hu)

http://www.vortaro.hu/lmz.pdf

May I now correct the article without having my changes reverted?

Klivo (talk) 04:42, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Who's Árpád RÁTKAI? I know who Britannica and National Geographic are.

Anyways. My preference is to simply omit any mention of nationality/ethnicity etc. all together. Volunteer Marek  05:05, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Please refer to the section 'Pri la aŭtoro' in this paper http://www.vortaro.hu/lmz.pdf . The paper discusses errors in Britannica and other encyclopedias. National Geographic seems to have gotten their information from a Google Doodle.

Zamenhof was ethnically Jewish, and a Russian speaking citizen of Russia. I see no reason to not include this information in Wikipedia.

Klivo (talk) 06:12, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. High school teacher, though at one point taught at a university apparently, and apparently a "political party school". Still not clear on why we should take his word over Britannica or National Geographic or treat his opinions about NG as viable.  Volunteer Marek  07:35, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

No one is asking you to take RÁTKAI's word. Britannica is not the word of God; and as for Nat Geo, please be serious. I have provided good evidence, including the words of Zamenhof himself. May I now update the page without having my changes reverted? 111.216.69.45 (talk) 14:06, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Above comment is by Klivo (talk) 14:09, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

The article is much improved. Thanks for listening. Klivo (talk) 04:51, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Nationality issue

Well perhaps he did not, but he never stated that he was Russian. Don't call me a Pole doesn't necessarily mean that he wasn't one. I do believe that he never acquired Polish nationality and you are right that he wasn't fully a Pole, but I will have to disagree with Russian nationality.

Oliszydlowski, talk 18 December 2012 (UTC)

This article probably needs a nationality section, discussing this topic in detail with reliable references. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:18, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

He actually did say he was Russian: he was, in his words, a ruslanda judo. — kwami (talk) 06:12, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Which is certainly important enough to discuss in the article, but it doesn't mean it's the only applicable qualification. He was a Jew, too, for example. The currently unreferenced claim that "His parents were of Lithuanian Jewish descent" could make him a Litvak, specifically. Yet his identification as a Russian - did it mean a Russian Jew? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:58, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

"Ruslanda judo" means 'Russian Jew', so yes, it means just that. --JorisvS (talk) 19:03, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

In what language is that? "Ruslanda judo" in Esperanto means "Ruslandia Jew" and "Ruslandia" was everywhere across occupied "landias" of the Russian Empire inhabited by peoples of a multitude of languages. Poeticbent talk 19:51, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

The English word is "Russian". — kwami (talk) 21:15, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Actually it's "Russian land", obviously. Which would include all the territory of the Russian empire, including the non-Russian parts. Volunteer Marek  23:38, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

No, it's "Russian". English does not have separate words for rusa and ruslanda. Both are "Russian". If we want to make the distinction, we need to paraphrase, e.g. 'ethnic Russian' vs 'Russian citizen'. — kwami (talk) 23:52, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I must be missing something, because I don't understand the quarrels about his nationality over here. In English, "nationality" means something similar to citizenship, but not quite. In English if you say "Polish national", it means "Polish citizen." Zamenhof was not a Polish citizen, because Poland didn't exist at any point of his life. He also wasn't ethnically Polish, he was an ethnic Jew who spoke Yiddish and Russian. There was no connection between him and Poland, except for the fact he lived in Congress Poland, a Russian province. Therefore, his nationality was Russian, while his ethnicity was Jewish.--194.228.32.194 (talk) 10:08, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

The difference is between what we define as territories occupied by an alien military force, versus their actual social fabric as well as democratic institutions in a time of peace. For example, ethnic Russians never lived en masse in Prague, Czechoslovakia, that's why we don't call Prague a Russian city. Poeticbent talk 14:55, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Humans -

Can we transcend this dispute? As I suggested above, we are probably best off simply omitting the Infobox entries under dispute, and to put more text in the article on his (complex) attitudes to Polish and Russian (and not just Judaic) issues. Feketekave (talk) 12:10, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

In order to stop this edit war, I created a section called Nationality where all the information regarding his origin, identity, and historical context should be explained. I suggest not to address this issue in the introduction of the article, since it requires a longer explanation, and stating something like "he was a [nationality] ophthalmologist" in this section will always result in a biased edit from someone else. Thank you. this user 20:02, 19 May 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nosmetana (talk • contribs)

I think for such a broad edit you need to either discuss it further or create an RfC vote/poll. This edit war is outdated and the previous version of the article was restored as you did not provide a substantial amount of references. Oliszydlowski, 13:14, 20 May 2018 (UTC).

among his works are such diverse elements as

Among the many works of Zamenhof, translated into Esperanto is the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament.

From what language was this sentence translated? It seems to say that Z wrote the Hebrew Bible and someone else translated it to Esperanto! More natural ways to say it in English:

Among Zamenhof's many works is a translation into Esperanto of the Hebrew Bible.

Zamenhof's many works include an Esperanta translation of the Hebrew Bible.

Among many other works, Zamenhof translated the Hebrew Bible into Esperanto. (This, though, implies that he translated many other works; did he?)

—Tamfang (talk) 21:21, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

The Hebrew Bible is among the many works that Zamenhof translated into Esperanto. --Error (talk) 03:38, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Omoto?

Hi,

I see Z referenced as a Omoto deity, but no mention of this here on his page. Any info on this? Ze Germans have it ("Die japanische Ōmoto-kyō-Religion sieht in Zamenhof einen Aspekt ihres Gottes."), but unreferenced.

T 88.89.219.147 (talk) 14:43, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on L. L. Zamenhof. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080719082100/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Literaturo/Revuoj/nlr/nlr35/cionistau.html to http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Literaturo/Revuoj/nlr/nlr35/cionistau.html
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150924060531/http://www.onb.ac.at/ev/collections/esperanto/Planned_languages_Ludwig_Lazar_Zamenhof.htm to http://www.onb.ac.at/ev/collections/esperanto/Planned_languages_Ludwig_Lazar_Zamenhof.htm
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110722014023/http://www.bialystok.ap.gov.pl/bit/50lat/boznicze_zamenhof1.jpg to http://www.bialystok.ap.gov.pl/bit/50lat/boznicze_zamenhof1.jpg
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20091220071153/http://en.lernu.net/biblioteko/pri_esperanto/zamenhof/index.php to http://en.lernu.net/biblioteko/pri_esperanto/zamenhof/index.php

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 07:01, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Ethnicity in lead

Hi Guys, I removed "Jewish" from the lead sentence. I am in NO way married to this change. It was more done to show my class how Wikipedia works and we were having a discussion about languages and constructed languages and I noticed this. Cheers! --Malerooster (talk) 16:32, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I repeated this edit per WP:MOSETHNICITY. I'll note I'm note sure Polish is correct either (given the geopolitical entities involved in the late 19th century and early 20th century) - though one could claim (as we presently do in the article) he died in the short-lived puppet state of the Kingdom of Poland (1917–1918) which predated the Second Polish Republic. However, that's a much more complex discussion. Removing Jewish, however, is rather clear per MOSETHNICITY - Zamenhof's notability does not rise from being Jewish. Icewhiz (talk) 05:50, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Icewhiz, Russian Wikipedia considers him Polish also and it was debated among Russians. In addition, Encyclopedia Britannica confirms Polish nationality. It's also noteworthy what the chief Rabbi said at Zamenhof's funeral which clearly showed his allegiance to Poland (stated in the article). Oliszydlowski (talk) 12:06, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Polish (or Russian subject?) in Congress Poland probably requires some project-wide consensus (and somewhere else than WikiProject Poland) - I'm not sure I have a very strong opinion either way (except that we should be somewhat consistent). Zamenhof specifically did speak Polish (and Yiddish) and lived in Warsaw (Białystok being much more complex in this regard) for much of his life - so it isn't that Polish is far off the mark (and furthermore some sources do support Polish). Removing Jewish from the lede is rather clear however per WP:MOSETHNICITY. Icewhiz (talk) 12:14, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Reverted. Consensus is not clear for removal of "Jewish", with support generally shaky even among those few here recently favoring it. I have been closely involved with Esperanto, even professionally, for nearly forty years, and there is certainly a consensus in the Esperanto world that Zamenhof was not Polish – at least not in the primary sense that the revision implies. I understand the rationale on the basis of WP:MOSETHNICITY, but in fact Zamenhof's being Jewish was quite relevant to his notability, as those familiar with his life and work are aware. Not being "far off the mark" doesn't justify the change, nor does the fact that "some sources do support Polish" since other sources don't. –Roy McCoy (talk) 12:55, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

@Roy McCoy: - three editors are against you here. Furthermore, WP:MOSETHNICITY is a project guideline - and carries weight beyond any local consensus. Zamenhof being Jewish was not related to his profession in life or to his notability (which is tied to Esperanto - and not to anything related to Judaism). You can mention that he was Jewish in the body - but our guidelines for the lede of biographies are quite clear - and exclude religion or ethnicity in most cases (e.g. exceptions being perhaps clergymen or other such roles where religion is closely tied to the notability of the person). Icewhiz (talk) 13:09, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

@Icewhiz: Your claiming three editors against one is somewhat stretching it, with Malerooster being overtly noncommittal and Oliszydlowski having previously accepted the "Polish-Jewish" description and having stated his agreement with it.[8] You don't seem to be aware of such things as Zamenhof's hilelismo (later homaranismo), or his stating that he would never have created Esperanto if he hadn't been Jewish. You allow for exceptions to the guideline in cases of religious ties, and this seems to be such a case. It would be possible to simply omit "Polish"/"Polish-Jewish" entirely, along with "ophthalmologist" (hardly Zamenhof's claim to fame), and leave it "was the inventor of the international language Esperanto". It might then be desired to mention Białystok and Warsaw with the dates of birth and death as in the Esperanto version of the article, however, and then to get rid of the Old Style dates (which might be a good idea anyway). I don't think such tinkering is necessary or advisable, and my present inclination is simply to leave the paragraph the way it is. I'm sorry to have been drawn into this and hope not to have to deal with it further. Thanks. –Roy McCoy (talk) 15:44, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Well - I was unaware of Oliszydlowski's post on your talk page (perhaps Oliszydlowski would clarify his position on whether we should state Zamenhof as Jewish in the lede). I am afraid you shall have to deal with this further - as WP:MOSETHNICITY overrides any local consensus (and we don't have a local consensus here in any event). If Zamenhof's Jewishness is relevant for Esperanto - perhaps that should be mentioned in the lede over there, however in this biographical article - we follow MOS for biographies. Icewhiz (talk) 15:54, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

As I previously stated I do not personally mind placing the term "Jewish" in the lede. However, it is true that per WP:MOSETHNICITY "Jewish" is classified as a religion or religious/cultural identity and not nationality. If you do look at articles about notable American Jews, you do not find the word "Jewish" in the lead section at all. Perhaps the term "Jewish" is most suitable for religious leaders such as Rabbis, Rebbes, spiritual leaders etc. Oliszydlowski (talk) 16:00, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps it could be granted that there is a difference between stating that Zamenhof was Jewish and stating that he was Polish-Jewish. There is a difference, and I don't think the unusual and complex nature of this case should be disregarded in deference to a general guideline. I have certainly noted more opposition to the notion that Zamenhof was Polish than to that he was Polish-Jewish, and I doubt this opposition is going to disappear. –Roy McCoy (talk) 16:14, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

This is not complex nor unusual. Millions of Jews lived in the pale of settlement (the majority self identifying as Polish Jews, and living in what was to become the Second Polish Poland in 1918) - Zamenhof is not particularly different from any other Jewish figure from the period in the region. We simply don't state the religion/ethnicity of bio subjects in the lede. E.g. look at Albert Einstein - the sole mention of being Jewish in the lede is his decision not to return to Germany in 1933 (he was visiting in the US) after Hitler came to power. Icewhiz (talk) 16:25, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Point taken. It's interesting, however, that you speak of a majority of Jews identifying themselves as Polish Jews while you want to change that designation, and that you speak of Zamenhof as a Jewish rather than Polish figure. He may be said to be both, and that's what the present text does. The guideline aside, "Polish" is less accurate and even misleading, given the existence of a Polish ethnic group to which Zamenhof did not belong As I suppose you know, even his Polish nationality is often contested, though it may also be maintained. –Roy McCoy (talk) 19:07, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Polishness indeed could be contested (though that is a wider discussion - and is mostly unrelated to Jewishness - 19th century geopolitics). Zamenhof being Jewish is not (AFAICT) contested on a factual basis - it is just something we usually keep out of the lede (MOS:ETHNICITY).Icewhiz (talk) 19:18, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

I have to agree with Roy McCoy here, this is an ongoing problem with MOS:Ethnicity interpreted in wrong way, ethnicity can be mentioned in the lede according to it. As Icewhiz stated above the identity was "Polish-Jews", so naming such figures solely as Polish or Russian is certainly misleading.Also, contrary to what Oliszydowski states, we do have figure on Wikipedia that are for example described as American-Jewish.Personally I support naming him(like many other figures from this religious-ethnic group) Polish-Jewish which actually is in line with MOS:Ethnicity.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 19:26, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

MOS is very clear - "Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless it is relevant to the subject's notability.". Unless you have a clear policy based rationale to not follow "generally not" - it is out. And - let me get this straight - @MyMoloboaccount: - are you suggesting a policy exception here specific to Polish Jews?Icewhiz (talk) 19:34, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Not at all, my position was explained here [9].Your interpretation would be very inadequate in relation to complicated issues in history of Central and Eastern Europe in relation to numerous inhabitants and various representatives of different ethnic groups, not only in relation to Polish Jews.Furthermore Polish-Jewish is not a ethnic or religious identity but a wider cultural one, that can be mentioned(not all Polish Jews were religious, and Polish identity isn't restricted to ethnic Polish identity)--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 20:24, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

MOS:ETHNICITY is very clear on this; there's no reason to mention "Jewish" in the lede, and certainly not in the first sentence. Being Jewish is in no way "relevant to the subject's notability"; Zamenhoff was not notable because he was Jewish. The complicated histories of various ethnic or religious or cultural identities in Central and Eastern Europe are irrelevant to that; Zamenhof was born in Białystok, lived in Poland, and died in Warsaw. I've had to take previous obsessions with putting "Jewish" in the first sentence of articles on Poles to WP:AN/I; I wouldn't want to have to do it again, but also wouldn't hesitate to do so. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:22, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Jayjg, Can the term "Jewish" be also removed from the lede section in the article Esperanto? Oliszydlowski (talk) 01:15, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

There's no hard and fast guideline there AFAICT (though marking people by religion/ethnicity/nationality has been problematic in other contexts) - however I would argue that Zamenhof's religion and nationality (complex as it was) is not due for the lede of Esperanto - what's relevant there is Zamenhof - e.g. see General relativity - "General relativity (GR, also known as the general theory of relativity or GTR) is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and the current description of gravitation in modern physics." - which doesn't go into Einstein's nationality or religion. Icewhiz (talk) 06:40, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

@Oliszydlowski: I see no reason for the lede of Esperanto to mention that Zamenhoff was Jewish; it's a very odd insertion. If people want to know that detail they can certainly click on the link to his article, which makes it very clear that he had Jewish parents, spoke Yiddish, etc. Jayjg ^(talk) 12:59, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

I contest that the "insertion" is "very odd". Indeed, the deletion is more dubious, but I couldn't contest the guideline (though believing that a possible exception was in order) and didn't want to get into an edit war. If the other people who are (or should be) watching this article are willing to leave Zamenhof oddly described as "Polish", so be it. I find it questionable, however, that Jayjg apparently can't even spell Zamenhof's name and yet insists on determining how he should be designated. I'm still tempted to delete "Polish"/"Polish-Jewish" in the lede altogether and have it simply say that he was the creator of Esperanto, and I may do this at some point. –Roy McCoy (talk) 11:02, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

@Roy McCoy: What I find "dubious" is objecting to an application of policy based on an alternate spelling/common typo; a cursory Google search will show that it is spelled both ways, and indeed, I also spelled it both ways in my comments, though I'm happy to stick to "Zamenhof" from now on, as it is more correct. More to the point, though, is that it's entirely irrelevant to policy. Regarding whether or not it this article should say "Polish", MOS:OPENPARABIO is also clear; please review item 3 from the list there. Jayjg ^(talk) 16:18, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Old Style dates

Are the Old Style dates in this article really necessary? Do they actually serve any practical purpose? If so, why here rather than in the multitude of other Wikipedia articles in which they don't appear? Thanks. –Roy McCoy (talk) 11:06, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Ethnicity/nationality: a proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hello, allow me to make a proposal in order to settle the question of Zamenhof's ethnicity (I prefer that term because "nationality" can also mean "citizenship"):

• Lead: In compliance with Wikipedia:MOSETHNICITY, we simply do not mention the ethnicity (or "nationality") of Zamenhof. No "Jewish", no "Polish", no "Russian". We simply say that he was an "eye doctor who lived in the Russian Empire". This should be the least controversial statement and is for the lead enough geographical information.

• New section "Ethnicity": We collect the arguments that have been made in the literature for the different ethnicities ascribed to Zamenhof. Maybe even in subsections. Thus, one part about claims that Zamenhof's ethnicity was "Jewish", one about "Polish", one about "Russian" and maybe one part or subsection "Other" (German, Lithuanian, homarano). A welcome side effect will be that other parts of the article don't have to deal so much with ethnical questions or aspects of his biography.

Personally, I find it most problematic to call him "Polish" as he explicitly said that he is no Pole and does not want to be called that way (not because he had something against Poles, but because he did not want to hide his belonging to the Jewish people).

Kind regards, Ziko (talk) 13:31, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

That seems reasonable. The MoS shouldn't be a straitjacket. We, of course, avoid things like Polish-Jewish or whatever, mostly because it gets abused by editors with unwholesome agendas, but that doesn't mean we have to if it's an important feature of someone's life. In this case, especially given Zamenhof's chief accomplishment, the ambiguity of his national identification would be a significant feature that influenced his life. Acroterion (talk) 13:59, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

I support this. This is what has been done in the articles on Al-Farabi and Copernicus. Khiikiat (talk) 15:20, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

@Ziko: - If you go over Wikipedia guidelines and discussion, it is evident that "Jewish" is neither a citizenship nor a nationality. Even if Zamenhof claimed differently and as you described "explicitly" (nice if you provide sources to prove that), one has to take into consideration the speech given by Rabbi Samuel Abraham Poznański at his funeral which clarifies identity issues. Understanding of the term "Polish" was different then since Poland did not exist at the time he was born. This was heavily discussed a few times. There is also no doubt that most published scholarly sources state "Polish" or "Polish-Jewish". I think the rest is POV. Solely stating "eye doctor who lived in the Russian Empire" is unacceptable and sounds like Russification; can lead to misconceptions; he also lived in the Congress Kingdom of Poland most his life and then in the Regency Kingdom of Poland. Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography, no ethnicity or religious identity is to be placed in the lead. Oliszydlowski (talk) 15:32, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Hello, "Jewish" in this case is no nationality or citizenship, but ethnicity. "Polish" may relate to a Polish citizenship, which did not exist then, or to Polish ethnicity, which Zamenhof denied for himself. Maybe "Polish" is meant sometimes as "related to Poland" or "in Poland" or "from Poland", which reminds me of the discussion about "Polish concentration camps" (= German concentration camps in Poland, but not run by Poland).

I don't think that "living in the Russian Empire" implicates "Russification"; exactly because of not using the adjective "Russian". But Zamenhof was a citizen (or subject) of the Russian Empire, undeniably.

Most quoted about this question is a letter to the Frenchman Michaux (a secular Jew) in 1905 (see Gaston Waringhien: Leteroj de L. L. Zamenhof, SAT, 1948, I, p. 115):

"„Supre mi diris, ke vastan publikan paroladon pri mia nacieco mi trovas en la nuna tempo neoportuna, ĉar mi devas nun eviti ĉion, kio senbezone donus kaŭzon al grandaj disputoj; sed kaŝi mian naciecon mi tute ne deziras; kaj se Vi parolos pri mia nacieco, volu diri, ke mi nomas min Ruslanda hebreo.“

"(My translation here): "Above I said that I do not find it expedient at this moment to talk vastly about my nationality, because I have now to avoid everything that unnecessarily may cause big disputes; but I totally do not wish to hide my nationality; and if you are going to talk about my nationality, please say that I call myself a Hebrew of Russia." (Ruslanda means explicitly not Russian, but related to Russia, the country.)

Zamenhof uses the term ruslanda hebreo also in other communications. And in a letter to the organisation of the congress in Kraków, 1912, he wrote that he considers himself a son of Poland but does not want to be called a Pole in order to avoid the impression that he masks himself with the name of a nation he does not belong to. Bernard Golden discussed the matter in 1988 and later and denied that Zamenhof was a Pole.

Shemer follows N.Z. Maimon in that to Zamenhof, Polujo was the country where he lived, Litovujo (meaning the historical region of Bialystok) was his patrujo (home country), and nacieco (nationality, meaning here ethnicity) was to Zamenhof the juda popolo (Jewish people).

I am happy to elaborate on any question. Ziko (talk) 16:35, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

@Ziko: - If you agree that Jewish is based on ethnicity then it cannot be included in the lead at all unless it was imperative to one's work, per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography. Also, I do not see how one's opinion, this case Bernard Golden's, is superior to that of other historians, and a colleague who spoke at this funeral and highlighted it evidently. Zamenhof's quote "A son of Poland, but not a Pole" identifies him as Polish-Jewish. I don't mind placing "Polish-Jewish" in the lead. Concerning the Russian Empire, the empire was highly multicultural, with semi-autonomous areas or forcibly annexed lands. The idea of citizenship was not as developed and simply identified one's area of residency; Zamenhof was born in what was then the Russian Empire, but resided in Congress Poland which makes a difference. Even if Zamenhof stated that his nationality is Jewish, by today's standards and Wikipedia policy it isn't - e.g. no article about an American of Jewish descent has the term "American-Jewish" in the lead. Oliszydlowski (talk) 16:49, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

@Oliszydlowski:, the point here is that if you are from Poland or live in Poland, that does not make you automatically "Polish". (I live in the Netherlands, but that does not make me Dutch.) Zamenhof was neither "Polish" nor "Polish-Jewish". He was exactly not a "Polish Jew", but a "Litvisher jid". Geller wrote a great paper on Zamenhof's attempts for a standardized form of Yiddish. She emphasizes that Zamenhof knew from his hometown the North Eastern (Litve) variety of Yiddish, not the "Polish" Yiddish that he met in Warsaw - with "Polish" meaning here not the West Slavic language, but the region of Central Poland. - What Wikipedia policies would prevent calling Zamenhof's ethnicity "Jewish"? The comparison with an "American Jew" (= USA citizenship and probably ethnicity, Jewish faith or culture) does not work here. Ziko (talk) 17:30, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

@Ziko: - What you claim is entirely POV. No policy prevents calling Zamenhof's ethnicity "Jewish", but all ethnicities are not permitted in the lead per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography (saying it third time now). I will not further discuss this if you claim "Zamenhof was neither Polish nor Polish-Jewish" which is entirely based on your opinion; and on the fact that Zamenhof's parents were Litvaks (a regionalism, not a nationality). It breaks the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view rule. Basing it on legacy, Zamenhof's legacy is strongest among the Jews, Esperanto speakers and in Poland, nowhere else. Oliszydlowski (talk) 17:41, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

That MOS part is about the lead. I don't find it necessary to mention his ethnicity in the lead, as I said, although "Jewish" would be the only correct answer. And that is not my personal opinion, I did not come up with that myself - Zamenhof himself said so (of course, in Esperanto). Waringhien, Maimon, Golden, Ludovikito, Gold Lins and others are the authoritative secondary sources here.

It is true that some authors, certainly in the first half of the 20th century, tried to hide the strong ties of Zamenhof to Jewishness because they were are afraid of antisemitism (or were antisemites themselves).

My proposal was and is: leave it away in the lead and then have a nice section with the different arguments. Ziko (talk) 17:52, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

@Ziko: - I am not a deciding authority, but I disagree with saying that Jewish is the "only" correct answer; it is very one sided and purely based on religious ethno-identity. His children were all Poles and citizens of Poland, but he would only be Jewish? That is confusing and illogical. I suggest creating a Wikipedia:Requests for comment (RfC) to achieve a Wikipedia:Consensus before implementing any changes. Oliszydlowski (talk) 18:00, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

First two sentences

Would this be acceptable to everyone? >>> "Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (Esperanto: Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof; Yiddish: אליעזר לודוויג זאַמענהאָף; 15 December [O.S. 3 December] 1859 – 14 April [O.S. 1 April] 1917) was an ophthalmologist born in Belostok in the Russian Empire (now Białystok in Poland). He is best known as the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language." Khiikiat (talk) 18:07, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Can't be in brackets because it won't be visible in Google infobox when searching it in the Google engine. Also, if we mention birthplace, deathplace would also have to be mentioned in the lead. And that would be unencyclopedic. Birthplace does not dictate nationality or one's scope of work and residency (eg. Rudyard Kipling was born in India and spent early years there). Oliszydlowski (talk) 18:08, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

@Khiikiat:, I think that that is a very suitable solution. Warsaw would not be necessary here, although it would be possible not to mention the birthplace but that he lived in Warsaw (most of his life). But I am happy with your proposal. Ziko (talk) 13:02, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

@Ziko and Oliszydlowski: Yes, I think this is better: "Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (Esperanto: Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof; Yiddish: אליעזר לודוויג זאַמענהאָף; 15 December [O.S. 3 December] 1859 – 14 April [O.S. 1 April] 1917) was an ophthalmologist who lived for most of his life in Warsaw. He is best known as the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language." Khiikiat (talk) 15:39, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Better, but I still suggest to do an RfC so other users may express their opinion. Oliszydlowski (talk) 02:09, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

I find it a good proposal, Khiikiat. Ziko (talk) 17:38, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

RfC: A new approach to L. L. Zamenhof's nationality/ethnicity/citizenship

Editors have been arguing about L. L. Zamenhof's nationality/ethnicity/citizenship for many years. Should we do the following?

• Change the first paragraph of the article to this: "L. L. Zamenhof (15 December 1859 – 14 April 1917) was an ophthalmologist who lived for most of his life in Warsaw. He is best known as the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language."
• Remove the nationality parameter from the infobox.
• Create a new section entitled Nationality (before the Name section), where different points of view regarding Zamenhof's nationality/ethnicity/citizenship can be set out with appropriate references.

A similar approach has been taken in relation to Nicolaus Copernicus and Al-Farabi. Khiikiat (talk) 01:15, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Comment: I think most of these ideas would probably solve the issue of nationality, but I would put the Nationality section after the Name section (or even make it a sub-section of Name), since it's not that important (and also ironic, given that his main goal was to overcome such petty quarrels). TucanHolmes (talk) 09:33, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Comment Is it not better to put both Russian and Polish in the nationality section of the infobox? (Didn't he hold both nationalities at different points in his life?) As for the rest, I concur with Khiikiat that a nationality section after "Name" would be best. As its a complex question, perhaps only his place of birth should be mentioned in the lead, something like "born in Białystok in present day Poland." Boynamedsue (talk) 18:02, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

@Boynamedsue: - There is no evidence he held Russian "nationality", only citizenship of the multicultural Russian Empire. Not everybody in the Empire was "Russian", particularly not people residing in Congress Poland or the Grand Duchy of Finland unless otherwise specified. I'd personally prefer the terms "Polish-Jewish" or "Jewish-Polish", however, there is an issue with religious-based ethnicity per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section. Oliszydlowski (talk) 02:11, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Nationality as "held" is citizenship, though I see through looking at the template that wikipedia considers there to be a difference. In this case the obvious thing to do is remove the nationality category and replace it with a citizenship category, to quote the template guide "Country of legal citizenship, if different from nationality. Rarely needed. See usage notes for |nationality=, above. Should only be used if citizenship differs from the value in |nationality= and cannot be inferred from the birthplace." This is surely what we are after here, no? Boynamedsue (talk) 07:50, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

• Yes - As demonstrated by the other pages where this format is used, this seemed to me to be the most elegant way of dealing with such cases. PraiseVivec (talk) 20:13, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Closure request @Oliszydlowski, Ziko, Acroterion, TucanHolmes, Boynamedsue, and PraiseVivec: I've requested that this discussion be closed via WP:ANRFC. Khiikiat (talk) 20:13, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

@Khiikiat: - I don't think the RfC template was posted in here in the first place. Other users would be notified and join the discussion if it was. That's why there aren't as many opinions/votes as of now. Oliszydlowski (talk) 01:03, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

The template was posted. There was just very little interest. Khiikiat (talk) 21:33, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Was it posted here? I think it usually should be on the talk page too. Oliszydlowski (talk) 10:40, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Recurring reverts of the sourced material without indicating reasons

@Khiikiat - Could you explain all these reverts? [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] Thanks - GizzyCatBella🍁 19:50, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

GizzyCatBella and 118.209.243.187 are performing ethnic vandalism against the results of consensus in the RfC close above. --188.112.18.2 (talk) 06:16, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Zamenhof Minekov.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 12:54, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Unsourced WP:OR in the article

Unsourced WP:OR (emphasized in green)

Quote from our article:

• Zamenhof was born on 15 December 1859, the son of Mark Zamenhof and Rozalia Zamenhof (née Sofer), in the multi-ethnic city of Belostok in the Russian Empire (now Białystok in Poland). At that time, the city was in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire as a result of the 1807 Treaties of Tilsit. His parents were of Litvak Jewish descent. This group inhabited the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He appears to have been natively bilingual in Yiddish and Russian.

Sources used for the above:

• 11 - L. L. Zamenhof#cite note-13

None of the sources present say Belostok (they say Białystok), none talks about Trearies of Tilsit and none talks about his parents being of Litvak Jewish descent inhabited the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

I fixed that -->[18],[19],[20] but later self reverted because I had some issue (I don't remember what it was I remember now what it was) with user Khiikiat who just reverted to the unsourced version. Can someone correct that WP:OR please. - GizzyCatBella🍁 08:49, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

One more thing that needs to be fixed:

Zamenhoff was born in Congress Poland - part of the Russian Empire. See more about Congress Poland - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:13, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Also:

Perhaps his birth that was December 3, 1859 in Julian calendar and December 15 in the Gregorian calendar should be noted in the bio section? - GizzyCatBella🍁 12:00, 4 November 2022 (UTC)