Tristan Tzara - Name

Name

S. Samyro, a partial anagram of Samy Rosenstock, was used by Tzara from his debut and throughout the early 1910s. A number of undated writings, which he probably authored as early as 1913, bear the signature Tristan Ruia, and, in summer of 1915, he was signing his pieces with the name Tristan.

In the 1960s, Rosenstock's collaborator and later rival Ion Vinea claimed that he was responsible for coining the Tzara part of his pseudonym in 1915. Vinea also stated that Tzara wanted to keep Tristan as his adopted first name, and that this choice had later attracted him the "infamous pun" Triste Âne Tzara (French for "Sad Donkey Tzara"). This version of events is uncertain, as manuscripts show that the writer may have already been using the full name, as well as the variations Tristan Ţara and Tr. Tzara, in 1913-1914 (although there is a possibility that he was signing his texts long after committing them to paper).

In 1972, art historian Serge Fauchereau, based on information received from Colomba, the wife of avant-garde poet Ilarie Voronca, recounted that Tzara himself had explained his chosen name was a pun in Romanian, trist în ţară, meaning "sad in the country"; Colomba Voronca was also dismissing rumors that Tzara had selected Tristan as a tribute to poet Tristan Corbière or to Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde opera. Samy Rosenstock legally adopted his new name in 1925, after filing a request with Romania's Ministry of the Interior. The French pronunciation of his name has become commonplace in Romania, where it replaces its more natural reading as ţara ("the land", ).