Esperanto was published in 1887 by Ludwik Zamenhof as an international auxiliary language.
Zamenhof was a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist from Białystok, a multilingual city where linguistic divisions contributed to tensions among communities. He designed Esperanto to be comparatively easy to learn and politically neutral, rather than tied to a particular nation.
His first book appeared in Warsaw under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto, meaning “Doctor Hopeful.” The name Esperanto later became the name of the language itself. Esperanto vocabulary draws substantially from European languages, while its grammar is designed around regular rules and affixes.
Esperanto never became a universal second language, but it developed an international community, literature, meetings, teaching materials, and online resources. The language also inspired later projects, including Ido, which emerged from a reform movement in the early 20th century.