Last name origin & meaning: Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Polish, Czech, Slovak,
Hungarian (Baltazár), etc. It is derived from the Biblical
personal names Balthazar and Belshazzar, which were
originally distinct but by medieval times had come to be regarded as
variants of a single name. The first is from Aramaic
Balshatzar, Babylonian Baal tas-assar ‘may Baal preserve
his life’, the second from Babylonian Baal shar-uzzur ‘may Baal
protect the king’. The latter was borne by the Chaldean king for whom
Daniel interpreted the writing on the wall (Daniel 5); the main reason
for the popularity of the first in medieval Italy and Germany was
that, according to legend, it was the name of one of the three Magi
from the East who attended Christ’s birth. His supposed relics were
venerated at first in Milan, but after 1164 in Cologne, where they had
been taken by Rainald of Dassel.
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