Larry Brikman of Toronto posted as follows:

"I found a cousin of mine in a Toronto cemetery. On his tombstone of course
is his hebrew name. Now, I do know a little hebrew, but I've never seen
this name before. For those of you who can read hebrew, here it is
right-to-left (the proper hebrew way):

Vav-vav-ayin-lamed-vav-youd-lamed.

His English name was Vladislav and his Russian name was Vladimir. Someone
told me that it might be Yiddish since both Hebrew and Yiddish have the
same alphabet with different sounds."

The Yiddish name in question is Velvil, a common name in Eastern European
countries. In fact, it is only one of the many diminutives of the primary
name Volf. Some of the diminutives of Volf
are: Velvil/Velvile/Veve; Volflin/Volvtsye;
Volvlin/Volvtsye/Volye/Vuovo.

All of these names form legal Jewish double names with the two Hebrew names
Binyamin and Ze'eyv. A typical legal double name might look like
this: Binyamin hamechune Velvil -- this is how the name would appear in a
Get (Jewish divorce document). A man with this double name would be called
to the Tora in an aliya as Binyamin Velvil. And similarly for the other
Yiddish names.

The exact Yiddish names used in various Eastern European countries may vary

from one country to the another, and might include other variations from

those listed above. This sort of information can be seen for Ukraine on
the Ukraine Given Names Data Base at
http://www.jewishgen.org/ukraine/srchukra.htm . This will be updated
soon. It may be worthwhile for some researchers to examine also some of
the other GNDBs for other countries at the JewishGen
site: www.jewishgen.org/databases/GivenNames/ .

Prof. G. L. Esterson, Ra'anana, Israel