Tevye the Dairyman (, Yiddish:
טבֿיה דער מילכיקער Tevye der milkhiker, Hebrew:
טוביה החולב) is the fictional narrator and protagonist of a series of short stories by
Sholem Aleichem, originally written in
Yiddish, and first published in 1894. The character is best known from the fictional memoir
Tevye and his Daughters (also called
Tevye's Daughters,
Tevye the Milkman or
Tevye the Dairyman) as a pious
Jewish milkman in
Tsarist Russia with six troublesome daughters: Tzeitel, Hodel, Chava, Shprintze, Bielke, and Teibel. He is also known from the musical dramatic adaptation of
Tevye and His Daughters,
Fiddler on the Roof. The Village of Boyberik, where the stories are set, is based on the town of
Boyarka in
Ukraine (then part of the
Russian Empire).