Along with descent from a Native American princess, it's one of the biggest genealogical myths.... something 'everyone' knows.
That names were changed at Ellis Island.
Nope, names weren't changed at Ellis Island by immigration officials. But names do vary.....
Follow me over the orange curlicue for more on this myth and some general discussion about names.
At Ellis Island, the clerks processing new immigrants worked from a passenger manifest that was generated in Europe, checking off names as the arrivals went through the line. The processing clerks often spoke the languages expected through their line ~ and if they didn't, there were interpreters available to assist.
For more.... an article from the New York Public Library.
Some people changed their name in anticipation of emigrating. Some traveled on papers with the wrong names for one reason or another. Sometimes a German clerk at the shipping company made a mistake with a Polish or Russian name. Or they changed their names themselves to fit in once they were in the U.S. But the officials at Ellis Island didn't do it for them ~ there was no process for doing it, and even if the officials had theoretically changed a name, there was no reason to keep it if the person didn't like it....
So, let's talk a bit more about names and how they vary. Last week, Fenway49 had fun with distinctive boys' names he's found in his family tree (if you missed it, go read it ~ we'll wait for you....). I'd like to take a bit of a meander this week on names and name changes, and how we look at them as we research.
Essentially, from a genealogical standpoint ~ names before about World War I and the rise of programs like Social Security were much more fluid. Very few people would have had a concept of one 'real' name. In some parts of Europe, family names weren't adopted until the early 1800s, so an immigrant in the late 19th century might not have been that attached to a name. For Jews, traditionally the Hebrew patronymic was what mattered, and it was only in a couple hundred years ago that civil authorities in many parts of Europe imposed needing a surname (although evidently rarely the surname itself, just the needing one) ~ and siblings often chose different names, just like immigrants to the U.S. sometimes took a different anglicized name from their siblings.
Sometimes there were just mistakes. I've written before about how my great-grandfather stunk at names (more here, too).
Another favorite oops was the woman I looked for all for months, named in her marriage record as Elizabeth Small ~ Small was the name of a prominent family in the town she was married and had children in. Just couldn't make any of the women in various records with name name work, so I gave up and moved on. After all, there's always another line to research. A couple years later, when researching another family, I came across her in a will listed by her married name. From that, I was able to backtrack her family and find her as Elizabeth Little ;-)
So you should always allow for the possibility that a written record is wrong.....
Many of what we call changes aren't. I distinguish between variations and changes ~ and I think it is a useful distinction. In fact, I've developed a bit of a scale for the process:
1. Spelling variation (including typos, mistakes from reading illegible handwriting, and copying errors)
2. Cultural variation
Nicknames: Meg/Daisy for Margaret
In Scotland: Peter/Patrick, Janet/Jessie/Jenny often were used interchangeably
3. Transliteration
alphabet change: since not always equivalent sounds represented, differences can arise.
I'd also include here cases where sounds aren't distinguished in the other language. Think, for example, of Havana/Habana or the Korean Rhee/Lee.
4. Translation
Shoshana -> Lily, Yaakov -> Jacob or James, maybe even something like Bluma -> Flower
5. Cultural adjustment
Yaakov -> Jack (which is more usually a nickname for John)
Also changes like Rosen -> Rose or Deckerovsky to Decker.
6. Name change
Completely different name, such as Faigye -> Ethel or Avraham -> Sidney
While it may seem like linguistic overkill to divide up a spectrum into such detail, research techniques will vary depending on what kind of variation (
#1 to #4 above) or change (
#6, with #5 falling a bit closer to change than variation) you are looking at.
I'd argue that the proof needed for actual changes (category #6 and probably #5) that the people listed in two different records are actually the same person is going to be more rigorous than for the variations.
A distant cousin of mine, using a variety of land records, has pretty much proved that a 17th century Irish immigrant to Massachusetts who was named Teague O'Berry or similar variations in early records ended his life as Thaddeus Berry ~ there are parcels of land that Teague bought and Thaddeus sold. I'd put that change at about a 5.5. Not quite a 'yeah, that's him' but not a complete change, either.
I recently helped someone in Facebook group who had been looking for her grandfather's family in the census for quite a while. The sons were named (as she knew them later in their lives) Benjamin, Irving, Paul, and Morton, with their father being Isaac. A couple of them had as adults anglicized their very Eastern European Jewish family name to a moderately common English surname ~ but the census records she was looking for would probably be under the original, easily misspelled (well, not spelled the way she expected....) name. Since it's the least likely to be misspelled, I focused on Paul to be the 'anchor' for the family I was looking for ~ and found them fairly quickly, as Paul is relatively unusual as a first name in Jewish families. (Yeah for Ancestry allowing searches without last names....). But when I found Paul with Eizik as his father (that's the way the census taker spelled Isaac in that family, another one on thee page, and several other times in his enumeration district) and Beny as his brother, the family name was clear, even if it was mistranscribed at Ancestry and not spelled in the original record the way the person i was helping was expecting.
Similarly, another woman I was helping was looking for her grandmother Rivka/Becky. Couldn't find her. But a sister was named Rose ~ much more likely to not have issues with either deviations from the expected spelling or in the transcribing. So when we looked for Rose, we found her ~ and Becca, mistranscribed at Ancestry as Celia :-(
So.... my basic point?
Years and years ago, when volunteering at a Family History Center, I was helping a woman who insisted her family name had always been spelled Read and absolutely and categorically refused to consider anyone whose name in a record was spelled Reed or Reid.
Guessing she's still looking for her great-great-grandfather....
What variations on family names have you run into?
Have you found amusing mistranscriptions at Ancestry?
Have you proven a name change for an ancestor?