Who created Esperanto in the 19th century?

L. L. Zamenhof created Esperanto and published its first foundation in 1887.

Zamenhof was a Jewish ophthalmologist from Białystok, then part of the Russian Empire. The city’s residents spoke several languages and belonged to different ethnic and religious communities. Zamenhof believed a neutral second language could help people communicate across those divisions.

He first published the language under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto, meaning “Doctor Hopeful.” The name later became the name of the language itself. Esperanto was designed with regular grammar, productive word-building, and a relatively small core vocabulary intended to make learning easier.

Esperanto never became a universal auxiliary language, but it developed an international community, literature, conferences, and native speakers. Its founding text, the Fundamento de Esperanto, remains central to the language’s written standard.