<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> Look up yenta in Wiktionary, the free dictionary . </Td> </Tr> <P> Yenta or Yente (Yiddish: יענטאַ ‎) is a Yiddish designation for a woman who is a gentlewoman or noblewoman coming from the Yiddish translation of yenta to genteel / gentle . </P> <P> There is a mistaken belief that the word for a Jewish matchmaker is "yenta" or "yente". In reality a Jewish matchmaker is called a shadchan (שדכן). The origin of this error is the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, in which a character named Yente serves as the matchmaker for the village of Anatevka . The Yiddish name "Yente" derives from a word meaning "gentle" or "noble" but it has come to refer to a woman who is a gossip or a busybody, much like the character in the musical . </P> <P> In the age of Yiddish theater, it started referring to a busybody or gossipmonger . The word has since become Yinglish (a Yiddish loanword in American Jewish English). In the 1920s Yenta was first popularized by the humorist Jacob Adler (not the actor Jacob P. Adler) writing under his pen name B. Kovner, in which he created the character Yenta, and featured Yenta in a Broadway play entitled Yenta Telebenta . Yenta was also his character in a 50 - year writing career for The Jewish Daily Forward . </P>

What is the name of the matchmaker in fiddler