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# Wallenstein

🏷 Latin Semitic pun · name — by Gerry · Apr 2022 · 316 words

The name Wallenstein, made famous in 3 plays by Schiller and 1 by Barca, may be a pun with Latin / Hebrew vilon for “veil”, and Hebrew he-shtaneh for “disguised”.

Albrecht Wallenstein was allegedly one of those “geniuses”, who came from a “poor noble” family, but through his alleged strategic genius became “one of the richest and most influential men”. But in the real world genius will get you nowhere. And there are the usual contradictions: Even though his family is said to be “poor”, he “acquired a multilingual university education across Europe”, and married a “wealthy widow of a Bohemian landowner”. German Wikipedia already calls his poverty a “legend from later times”. As usual, he may have come from the top families in the first place.

If his name is a pun with velum for “veil”, it would fit this spooky picture. When used at the end of a syllable, M & N sound very similar, so Wallen-Stein is close to Velum-Stein. The N also occurs in Polish welon for “veil”, and in some grammar forms of “veiling” in Italian & Latin, which Wallenstein had learned in his “multilingual university education”.

What’s more, Latin velum for “veil” was loaned into Hebrew as וילון wylwn vilon with N, in ancient times already. Since Stein puns with Hebrew השתנה h-štnh he-shtaneh for “disguised”, Vilon-Staneh would be a perfectly Hebrew compound name.

#### Hebrew velon = veil, curtain

וועלאן‎ wwˁlˀn velon : veil — Yiddish (Wikt)

וילון wylwn vilon : curtain; Ultimately from Latin velum. — Hebrew (Wikt)

וילון wylwn vilon : door-curtain, curtain; esp. Vilon (Curtain), the lowest of the seven heavens — Hebrew (Jastrow)

וילון wylwn vilon : curtain. From Latin vēlum (= sail, piece of cloth, awning, curtain, veil), from IE base *weg (= to weave). See ‘wick’ in my CEDEL and cp. ‘veil’ ibid. — Hebrew (Klein)

#### Polish welon = veil

welon : veil, veiltail; Borrowed from Italian velo, from Latin vēlum. — Polish (Wikt)

🏷 Latin Semitic pun · name