Tristan Tzara (French: [tRista dzaRa]; Romanian: [tris'tan 'tsara]; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; April 16 [O.S. April 4] 1896 - December 25, 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement. Under the influence of Adrian Maniu, the adolescent Tzara became interested in Symbolism and co-founded the magazine Simbolul with Ion Vinea (with whom he also wrote experimental poetry) and painter Marcel Janco. During World War I, after briefly collaborating on Vinea's Chemarea, he joined Janco in Switzerland.

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 Ane 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 Tara 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 in tara, meaning "sad in the country"; Colomba Voronca was also dismissing rumors that Tzara had selected Tristan as a tribute to poet Tristan Corbiere 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 tara ("the land", Romanian pronunciation: ['tsara]).

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