Lazăr Șăineanu
Lazăr Șăineanu (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈlazər ʃəiˈne̯anu], also spelled Șeineanu, born Eliezer Schein; Francisized Lazare Sainéan, French pronunciation: [lazaʁ sa.ine.ɑ̃], or Sainéanu; April 23, 1859 – May 11, 1934) was a United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia-born philologist, linguist, folklorist and cultural historian. A specialist in Oriental and Romance studies, as well as a Germanist, he was primarily known for his contribution to Yiddish and Romanian philology, his work in evolutionary linguistics, and his activity as a literary and philological comparatist. Șăineanu also had innovative contributions to the investigation and anthologizing of Romanian folklore, placed in relation to Balkan and East Central European traditions, as well as to the historical evolution of Romanian in a larger Balkan context, and was a celebrated early contributor to Romanian lexicography. His main initiatives in these fields are a large corpus of collected fairy tales and the 1896 Dicționarul universal al limbii române ("The Universal Dictionary of the Romanian Language"), which have endured among the most popular Romanian scientific works. A member of the non-emancipated Jewish-Romanian community, Lazăr Șăineanu stood for the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) ideas, and opted in favour of Jewish assimilation into the Romanian mainstream.