Meddling with words
This month’s Wired magazine had an article about Google’s underlying economic model, which relies on instant auctions to put related advertisements on search results. It used a word I hadn’t heard before:
“The theory was Google as yenta—matchmaker,” said Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist.
Varian’s definition comes from the character Yente in “Fiddler on the Roof,” who was a matchmaker. But yenta, or yente, is originally a Yiddish word that means “A person, especially a woman, who is meddlesome or gossipy,” according to the American Heritage Dictionary and other sources I found.
I found an offhand reference or two while Googling yenta that said the word also took on the matchmaker meaning after the Broadway debut of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Here’s the American Heritage etymology: From the “Yiddish yente, back-formation from the woman’s name Yente, alteration of Yentl, from Old Italian Gentile, from gentile, meaning amiable, highborn, from Latin gentilis, meaning of the same clan.”
As always when it comes to Yiddish, I welcome corrections for any misinterpretation I might have introduced.
Posted on June 5, 2009 12:00 pm, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
I’ve always understood a “Yenta” to be the woman with the busybody connotation (from the Yiddish). I’m not sure whether or not Fiddler really contributed to it’s use as a matchmaker, since I’m not that old, but it’s a natural progression (i.e. a matchmaker would, by definition, be in everybody else’s business).
On further thought, I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I’d be surprised if the Yentl connection to Italian is real. In Yiddish, it’s common to add a ‘l’ or ‘la’ to the end of a name or noun to make it into a nickname or a diminutive. I doubt there’s a relation other than coincidence.
And while we’re on the subject, the story of Fiddler predates the play from the stories of Sholom Aleichem (mid 1800′s to 1915 or so), and much of his writing ‘borrows’ from earlier Jewish folk tales. I’m pretty sure that the term Yenta is at least a couple/few hundred years old.