I'm curious about all the different names I'm seeing for Zamenhof.

Wikipedia acknowledges differneces in naming, but do any Esperantists here know what Zamenhof himself prefered the two L's to mean?

Thank you for any answers.

Hound_of_God:I'm curious about all the different names I'm seeing for Zamenhof.

Wikipedia acknowledges differneces in naming, but do any Esperantists here know what Zamenhof himself prefered the two L's to mean?

Thank you for any answers.

This most definitely would have been dependent upon social context. He was most likely known as Leyzer the Yiddish/Hebrew form of his name in Jewish social contexts his entire life.

Wikipedia makes it clear that Zamenhof began going by Lyudovik while at University.

Wikipedia:While at university, Zamenhof began using the Russian name Lyudovik (often transcribed Ludovic; in English the form Ludwig is also used) in place of Lazar.

It's just an educated guess, but, it's most likely that he did so to reduce his visibility as a Jew as Russia had frequent social unrest due to antisemitism at the time.

Is that helpful?

~Jeff