The date of his birth was confirmed by the poet's elder sister, Aglae Drogli, who affirmed that the place of birth was the village of Ipotești. Mihail (as he appears in baptismal records) or Mihai (the more common form of the name that he used) was born in , Moldavia. He spent his early childhood in Botoșani and Ipotești, in his parents family home. From 1858 to 1866 he attended school in Cernăuți. He finished 4th grade as the 5th of 82 students, after which he attended two years of "gymnasium". The first evidence of Eminescu as a writer is in 1866. In January of that year Romanian teacher Aron Pumnul died and his students in Cernăuţi published a pamphlet, "Lăcrămioarele învățăceilor gimnaziaști" ("The Tears of the Gymnasium Students") in which a poem entitled "La mormântul lui Aron Pumnul" ("At the Grave of Aron Pumnul") appears, signed "M. Eminovici". On 25 February his poem "De-aș avea" ("If I Had") was published in Iosif Vulcan's literary magazine "Familia" in Pest. This began a steady series of published poems (and the occasional translation from German). Also, it was Iosif Vulcan, who disliked the Slavic source suffix ""-ici"" of the young poet's last name, that chose for him the more apparent Romanian "nom de plume" "Mihai Eminescu". In 1867, he joined Iorgu Caragiale's troupe as a clerk and prompter; the next year he transferred to Mihai Pascaly's troupe. Both of these were among the leading Romanian theatrical troupes of their day, the latter including Matei Millo and . He soon settled in Bucharest, where at the end of November he became a clerk and copyist for the National Theater. Throughout this period, he continued to write and publish poems. He also paid his rent by translating hundreds of pages of a book by Heinrich Theodor Rotscher, although this never resulted in a completed work. Also at this time he began his novel "Geniu pustiu" ("Wasted Genius"), published posthumously in 1904 in an unfinished form.