'El is my judge' — deported from Jerusalem as a youth in 605 BC, renamed Belteshazzar by the empire (a name the narrator quietly declines to use), trained three years in Babylon's cuneiform curriculum, and found 'ten hands better' than the court's own diviners (1:20). He serves through the entire exile — 'until the first year of King Cyrus' (1:21), 605 to 539 BC — under Babylonian and then Persian kings, interpreter of dreams in the book's first half, seer of visions in its second. Ezekiel, his contemporary, already uses the name proverbially for righteousness and wisdom (Ezekiel 14:14; 28:3).