One question that routinely comes up in genealogy research: why is the family’s surname different from its (presumed) original form? Most people have heard one explanation: those names were “changed at Ellis Island,” altered either maliciously or ignorantly by port officials when the immigrant passed through. The charge against immigration officials, however, is provably false: no names were written down at Ellis Island, and thus no names were changed there. The names of arriving passengers were already written down on manifests required by the federal government, lists which crossed the ocean with the passengers. Records kept by the government demonstrate conclusively that immigrants left Ellis Island with the same surnames they had arrived with. The idea that names were changed at the point of entry is a myth, an urban legend promoted by a popular film. Changes were made later, by the immigrants themselves, usually during the naturalization process.
And a quote:
It’s difficult to say when the urban legend about names being altered at Ellis Island began, but easy to know when the notion spread to the popular imagination. In the 1974 film The Godfather II, which closely follows events described in the novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo, Vito Andolini is sent away from his violence-suffused home town of Corleone, in Sicily, when he is a child. He arrives at the Ellis Island processing station and, overwhelmed by the noise and the people, finds himself unable to speak. The immigration official asks the boy his name, and the question is repeated in Italian by a translator. The frightened boy stays mute, so the translator looks at the card pinned to Vito’s clothing. He clearly says, “Vito Andolini, from Corleone,” but the clerk misunderstands and mutters, “Vito Corleone” (the translator does not, for some reason, correct him). The clerk then appears to record “Vito Corleone” on the paper in front of him, and little Vito is sent on his way. And that, we are clearly expected to conclude, is how the Godfather got his name.
Regarding misspellings: I do this kind of genealogy professionally, and one thing I don't think a lot of people realize today is just how non-standardized your 'official' name was back in the day....
Regarding misspellings: I do this kind of genealogy professionally, and one thing I don't think a lot of people realize today is just how non-standardized your 'official' name was back in the day. Like the thought of 'correcting' your name if the government got it wrong sounds good, but is misguided I think. Like today, if my name is John Smith and I receive some official document saying John Smath or Jon Smith, I'd probably want to correct it so that it doesn't come back to cause issues later in my life when applying for a loan, or buying a house, or getting a passport, or running a background check, etc.
However in the 1800s (and prior, presumably, I'm just most familiar with the 1800s and early 1900s) there wasn't really an official spelling to your name. You kinda just wrote whatever you wanted your name to be. Who's gonna correct you on your own damn name? And a lot of times it was written by someone else and you just told them your name, both for simplicity's sake and also because a lot of people couldn't read or write very well. So you end up in cases where you appear in the 1870 census as John Smith, then in the 1880 census as Jon Smith, then in the 1900 census as J. Smith, and the 1910 census as John Smythe. And those four documents, coupled with maybe a marriage record and death record, and possibly some newspaper articles that mention you, are literally the only documents that remain of your existence. So how was your name spelled? Well no one alive today knows for sure, we just have a best guess based on the documents available to us.
Standardized spelling in general is relatively new! As much as some folks complain about poor grammar and spelling on the internet I wonder if we aren't just reverting back to an acknowledgement...
Standardized spelling in general is relatively new! As much as some folks complain about poor grammar and spelling on the internet I wonder if we aren't just reverting back to an acknowledgement that dictionaries are fine and all but if you get what I mean, that's the important bit.
I think some of that reversion is coming with the globalization of our world. Used to be that languages and accents developed as a result of isolation, i.e. you talk to the same group of people...
I think some of that reversion is coming with the globalization of our world. Used to be that languages and accents developed as a result of isolation, i.e. you talk to the same group of people every day so you all start sounding somewhat similar gradually until you all sound completely different than the original accent you once had. As the world started coming together and people started regularly interacting with others across the globe, we had a need to standardize languages so we could understand one-another.
But now that the world is less isolated than ever, things are evolving so quickly and globally that its hard to standardize something that is constantly changing. Slang terms, accent variation, and regional spellings based on those accents make it so that it's impossible to say for certain what is 'correct' and what is not.
I'm sure some purists out there might try, but I agree with you that the gist is the most important part. As long as you understand what I'm trying to say, then the rest is secondary. Still important, of course, but not as important as the meaning behind the words.
But as for the topic of this thread: names are an entirely different beast. Because of our hyper-bureaucratic world, the exact spelling of your name matters a lot for certain official documents. So gone are the days where you just told someone what your name was and that became your 'official' name since no one could really argue against it.
Yeah, it makes sense why names have remained more standardized, currently, than the rest of language. Although transliteration and the expectation of, for example, people having particular types...
Yeah, it makes sense why names have remained more standardized, currently, than the rest of language. Although transliteration and the expectation of, for example, people having particular types of names - I have students that don't have either a first or last name (I forget) by the way their names are translated and they show up as "unknown" for that name in our systems so there are definitely still gaps in that standardization.
Interesting read. Seems like situations like in the Godfather probably didn't happen, but doesn't that just move possible recording errors to some other stage, such as the discrepancy review board...
Interesting read. Seems like situations like in the Godfather probably didn't happen, but doesn't that just move possible recording errors to some other stage, such as the discrepancy review board upon arrival, some point on the ship, or prior to boarding the ship? Then Ellis Island would still be the point that many people realize that an error was made, but since no recording was done there, they couldn't fix it. The idea that people would be treated as stowaways and sent back if they weren't on the manifest just means they were incentivized to say "yep, that's me," if there were any errors. I think they mention checking ID upon boarding, but not upon arrival.
Of course the documents usually say that the documentation was great and not full of holes and errors. In my experience, this is really hard even when there's no incentive to do things wrong. Forms can be filled out by an analyst trained in various quality system SOPs, reviewed by a peer, reviewed by a manager, reviewed by QA... Then when government regulators show up we pull the old files and review them only to find numerous holes and errors that we now have to explain. No evidence of anything nefarious, just documentation mistakes. Hard to believe these passenger manifests representing 12 million immigrants didn't also have errors.
Take my name for example. The earliest record we can trace our name back to is good ol Abraham Zieve arriving at Ellis Island with his Hebrew last name anglicized wrong. Instead of Ze'ev, it's...
Take my name for example. The earliest record we can trace our name back to is good ol Abraham Zieve arriving at Ellis Island with his Hebrew last name anglicized wrong. Instead of Ze'ev, it's recorded as Zieve.
Was this due to English illiteracy? Was this due to non-standardization of Hebrew to English translation at the time? Did he purposely change it to stand out?
Honestly, all of that is lost to time as far as I can tell. All that's left is the earliest proof I can find, that first record at Ellis Island. I'll still use the phrasing 'changed at Ellis Island' personally, as 'Mistake made likely before Ellis Island but completely untraceable before hand' would be technically correct, but I feel needlessly pedantic.
I get it, and transliterating names from different alphabets is always going to be much more complicated and have more personal preference, error, and local pronunciation behind why the...
I get it, and transliterating names from different alphabets is always going to be much more complicated and have more personal preference, error, and local pronunciation behind why the transliteration choices were made. I don't think any one person's story is perpetuating a false narrative, but it's nice to be able to share the facts that this wasn't a common practice. (I know several German families that changed their names around WWI or WWII and this got changed in family stories to being an Ellis Island thing rather than a "avoid discrimination and harassment" thing.
But I think names and family stories are neat as a rule
Chinese names were also subject to inconsistent anglicizations. The same character 陳 became Chin, Chun, Chen, or Cheng (and probably others) depending on who heard it.
Chinese names were also subject to inconsistent anglicizations. The same character 陳 became Chin, Chun, Chen, or Cheng (and probably others) depending on who heard it.
I have wondered a lot of there's consistency based on the person hearing/transliterating the name's local accent/dialect. Like there are people that pronounce the English word "chin" closer to...
I have wondered a lot of there's consistency based on the person hearing/transliterating the name's local accent/dialect. Like there are people that pronounce the English word "chin" closer to "chen"
I have no idea if that's a studied thing or not though
I believe it is studied! Looking into where a lot of countries names come from in English is one particular facet that I've looked into, like how Nihon became Japan. As you surmised, the game of...
I believe it is studied! Looking into where a lot of countries names come from in English is one particular facet that I've looked into, like how Nihon became Japan.
As you surmised, the game of telephone can have a lot to do with what words end up translated.
"During the Heian period, 大和 was gradually replaced by 日本, which was first pronounced with the Chinese reading (on'yomi) Nippon and later as Nifon, and then in modern usage Nihon, reflecting shifts in phonology in Early Modern Japanese.[1] Marco Polo called Japan 'Cipangu' around 1300, based on the Chinese name,[5] probably 日本國; 'sun source country' (compare modern Min Nan pronunciation ji̍t pún kok). In the 16th century in Malacca, Portuguese traders first heard from Malay and Indonesian the names Jepang, Jipang, and Jepun.[6] In 1577 it was first recorded in English, spelled Giapan.[6] At the end of the 16th century, Portuguese missionaries came to Japan and created grammars and dictionaries of Middle Japanese. The 1603–1604 dictionary Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam has 2 entries: nifon[7] and iippon.[8] Since then many derived names of Japan appeared on early-modern European maps."
According to the article, people could and did change their names later. It wasn't too late. Record-keeping was a lot looser back then. (In my case, I heard a family legend that it was an...
According to the article, people could and did change their names later. It wasn't too late. Record-keeping was a lot looser back then.
(In my case, I heard a family legend that it was an elementary school teacher, but who knows?)
As kind of an aside, is there something about my writing style that's misleading? I didn't say "too late" in my comment, just that they couldn't fix it at the time of arrival. I assume that if you...
As kind of an aside, is there something about my writing style that's misleading? I didn't say "too late" in my comment, just that they couldn't fix it at the time of arrival.
I assume that if you had to go through some later process to make corrections, many people either couldn't be bothered to go through it or didn't understand the process. One time the DMV misspelled my name when registering a used car I'd purchased from a private party. I initially dragged my feet on correcting it, but the misspelling started showing up on my credit report and junk mail. It was a pain to change it, and it still shows as a prior alias on my credit report.
I skimmed and misread. Sorry about that! (Quotes removed.) But it raises a question: what were records archived from ship manifests used for? Why would an immigrant care if they were incorrect? I...
I skimmed and misread. Sorry about that! (Quotes removed.)
But it raises a question: what were records archived from ship manifests used for? Why would an immigrant care if they were incorrect? I found this:
Ellis Island officials, like those at other immigration ports of entry, did not send their manifests to the central office in Washington, DC, because the records were needed for daily use in arrival verification work. Officers might request proof of an immigrant's legal entry (arrival) for a variety of reasons. For example, all applications for Reentry Permits, Certificates of Arrival, or other benefits required checking an application against the original arrival record. As a consequence of the manifest filing system, all requests for verification of arrival had to include the port, date of arrival, and name of vessel, as well as an alien's full name and other identifying information. Search requests of direct arrivals to known ports of entry required only the identifying information, date of arrival, and name of vessel.
Many people travelled back and forth between the US and Europe and so I suppose they might need a Reentry Permit. But suppose they didn't? I guess sometimes they might need a Certificate of Arrival, but what was that for? Apparently it could be used to prove residence requirements for becoming a US citizen:
In general, naturalization was a two-step process* that took a minimum of five years. After residing in the United States for two years, an alien could file a "declaration of intention" ("first papers") to become a citizen. After three additional years, the alien could "petition for naturalization" (”second papers”). After the petition was granted, a certificate of citizenship was issued to the new citizen. These two steps did not have to take place in the same court. [*Exceptions can include cases of derivative citizenship, processes for minor aliens 1824-1906, and special consideration for veterans.]
I'd guess that courts would accept other proofs of residence too. Going back to the original article, people could change their names when becoming a citizen:
Many immigrants chose to change their names later on—in 1906, federal law made it easy to do so during the citizenship process, and still does so today.
So, yeah, those records likely had errors, but it didn't mean they had to stick to using the same name. It's just... records have errors sometimes.
I think it was initially a sort of euphemism. They changed it when they immigrated, not meaning to imply it was forced upon them. It certainly happened with my family name in one way or another,...
I think it was initially a sort of euphemism. They changed it when they immigrated, not meaning to imply it was forced upon them.
It certainly happened with my family name in one way or another, many consanents and accented characters were normalized away, even before the advent of ASCII. I suspect it was intentional, by my grandparents, moving to a country where the dominant language is English without accented characters in the alphabet was bound to cause problems sooner or later. Incidentally my grandparents met at Ellis Island, both emmigrating from Germany/Poland in that akward time between WW1 and WW2. So that may well have been part of the euphemism.
I suspect either documentation or cultural errors. Everything was handwritten, a busy clerk checking people in verbally didn't neccessarily bother to ask how to spell a name.
It still well could have been forced on them -- just through softer means than a literal guy at Ellis Island writing it down wrong. There were serious social pressures to change your name,...
It still well could have been forced on them -- just through softer means than a literal guy at Ellis Island writing it down wrong. There were serious social pressures to change your name, particularly if you weren't from a WASP background. It's not hard to see some coercive pressure to Anglicize your family name if your family and kids get treated visibly worse for it because it's an obvious sign that you're part of an othered ethnic group.
You've left everything you know behind to come to a far away country and the first thing you do is let some clerk take away your name, one of the few things you have at that point? The idea that...
You've left everything you know behind to come to a far away country and the first thing you do is let some clerk take away your name, one of the few things you have at that point? The idea that any one person would just accept that mistake as their life now, let alone enough people for it to be a systemic problem never made any sense to me.
You've left everything you know behind to come to a far away country and the first thing you do is talk back to a functionary of the government of the place you've just landed? The idea that...
You've left everything you know behind to come to a far away country and the first thing you do is talk back to a functionary of the government of the place you've just landed? The idea that someone would decide to not risk their future by backtalking the government agent is all too plausible.
A few years ago I found a couple of the original documents of my family's name change that had been in the possession of an older relative who'd forgotten about them. the family name had always...
A few years ago I found a couple of the original documents of my family's name change that had been in the possession of an older relative who'd forgotten about them. the family name had always been a source of curiosity because the current family name isn't all that close to something people expect from that part of the world but if you squint, sometimes people go "oh, of course". But no, not really. No one else has this surname and it's completely different than the original. The similarities end at sharing one of the same letters. That's it.
I had always thought it would've happened during the immigration process, but it didn't, it happened during the naturalization process. I even have the letter my great-grandfather received explaining that "yes, this man one lived in this town and was born on such-and-such date and now seeks to become an American citizen," signed by the mayor of the town he was born in as proof that my great-grandfather was who he claimed. Then there's a document saying "and now the surname is this" and that's it. Name changed, apparently.
So now that question is answered, but I have two bigger questions. Why this name specifically and why was changing the surname so important? We'll never know and, frankly, it doesn't change anything. For better or worse, I am who I am, I'm not my ancestors and knowing more about them wouldn't change that.
Here's the abstract:
And a quote:
Regarding misspellings: I do this kind of genealogy professionally, and one thing I don't think a lot of people realize today is just how non-standardized your 'official' name was back in the day. Like the thought of 'correcting' your name if the government got it wrong sounds good, but is misguided I think. Like today, if my name is John Smith and I receive some official document saying John Smath or Jon Smith, I'd probably want to correct it so that it doesn't come back to cause issues later in my life when applying for a loan, or buying a house, or getting a passport, or running a background check, etc.
However in the 1800s (and prior, presumably, I'm just most familiar with the 1800s and early 1900s) there wasn't really an official spelling to your name. You kinda just wrote whatever you wanted your name to be. Who's gonna correct you on your own damn name? And a lot of times it was written by someone else and you just told them your name, both for simplicity's sake and also because a lot of people couldn't read or write very well. So you end up in cases where you appear in the 1870 census as John Smith, then in the 1880 census as Jon Smith, then in the 1900 census as J. Smith, and the 1910 census as John Smythe. And those four documents, coupled with maybe a marriage record and death record, and possibly some newspaper articles that mention you, are literally the only documents that remain of your existence. So how was your name spelled? Well no one alive today knows for sure, we just have a best guess based on the documents available to us.
Standardized spelling in general is relatively new! As much as some folks complain about poor grammar and spelling on the internet I wonder if we aren't just reverting back to an acknowledgement that dictionaries are fine and all but if you get what I mean, that's the important bit.
I think some of that reversion is coming with the globalization of our world. Used to be that languages and accents developed as a result of isolation, i.e. you talk to the same group of people every day so you all start sounding somewhat similar gradually until you all sound completely different than the original accent you once had. As the world started coming together and people started regularly interacting with others across the globe, we had a need to standardize languages so we could understand one-another.
But now that the world is less isolated than ever, things are evolving so quickly and globally that its hard to standardize something that is constantly changing. Slang terms, accent variation, and regional spellings based on those accents make it so that it's impossible to say for certain what is 'correct' and what is not.
I'm sure some purists out there might try, but I agree with you that the gist is the most important part. As long as you understand what I'm trying to say, then the rest is secondary. Still important, of course, but not as important as the meaning behind the words.
But as for the topic of this thread: names are an entirely different beast. Because of our hyper-bureaucratic world, the exact spelling of your name matters a lot for certain official documents. So gone are the days where you just told someone what your name was and that became your 'official' name since no one could really argue against it.
Yeah, it makes sense why names have remained more standardized, currently, than the rest of language. Although transliteration and the expectation of, for example, people having particular types of names - I have students that don't have either a first or last name (I forget) by the way their names are translated and they show up as "unknown" for that name in our systems so there are definitely still gaps in that standardization.
Interesting read. Seems like situations like in the Godfather probably didn't happen, but doesn't that just move possible recording errors to some other stage, such as the discrepancy review board upon arrival, some point on the ship, or prior to boarding the ship? Then Ellis Island would still be the point that many people realize that an error was made, but since no recording was done there, they couldn't fix it. The idea that people would be treated as stowaways and sent back if they weren't on the manifest just means they were incentivized to say "yep, that's me," if there were any errors. I think they mention checking ID upon boarding, but not upon arrival.
Of course the documents usually say that the documentation was great and not full of holes and errors. In my experience, this is really hard even when there's no incentive to do things wrong. Forms can be filled out by an analyst trained in various quality system SOPs, reviewed by a peer, reviewed by a manager, reviewed by QA... Then when government regulators show up we pull the old files and review them only to find numerous holes and errors that we now have to explain. No evidence of anything nefarious, just documentation mistakes. Hard to believe these passenger manifests representing 12 million immigrants didn't also have errors.
I don't think it's the case that there weren't errors, just that there wasn't a systemic name change by ignorant/xenophobic clerks at Ellis Island.
Take my name for example. The earliest record we can trace our name back to is good ol Abraham Zieve arriving at Ellis Island with his Hebrew last name anglicized wrong. Instead of Ze'ev, it's recorded as Zieve.
Was this due to English illiteracy? Was this due to non-standardization of Hebrew to English translation at the time? Did he purposely change it to stand out?
Honestly, all of that is lost to time as far as I can tell. All that's left is the earliest proof I can find, that first record at Ellis Island. I'll still use the phrasing 'changed at Ellis Island' personally, as 'Mistake made likely before Ellis Island but completely untraceable before hand' would be technically correct, but I feel needlessly pedantic.
I get it, and transliterating names from different alphabets is always going to be much more complicated and have more personal preference, error, and local pronunciation behind why the transliteration choices were made. I don't think any one person's story is perpetuating a false narrative, but it's nice to be able to share the facts that this wasn't a common practice. (I know several German families that changed their names around WWI or WWII and this got changed in family stories to being an Ellis Island thing rather than a "avoid discrimination and harassment" thing.
But I think names and family stories are neat as a rule
Chinese names were also subject to inconsistent anglicizations. The same character 陳 became Chin, Chun, Chen, or Cheng (and probably others) depending on who heard it.
I have wondered a lot of there's consistency based on the person hearing/transliterating the name's local accent/dialect. Like there are people that pronounce the English word "chin" closer to "chen"
I have no idea if that's a studied thing or not though
I believe it is studied! Looking into where a lot of countries names come from in English is one particular facet that I've looked into, like how Nihon became Japan.
As you surmised, the game of telephone can have a lot to do with what words end up translated.
From this Wikipedia article - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Japan
"During the Heian period, 大和 was gradually replaced by 日本, which was first pronounced with the Chinese reading (on'yomi) Nippon and later as Nifon, and then in modern usage Nihon, reflecting shifts in phonology in Early Modern Japanese.[1] Marco Polo called Japan 'Cipangu' around 1300, based on the Chinese name,[5] probably 日本國; 'sun source country' (compare modern Min Nan pronunciation ji̍t pún kok). In the 16th century in Malacca, Portuguese traders first heard from Malay and Indonesian the names Jepang, Jipang, and Jepun.[6] In 1577 it was first recorded in English, spelled Giapan.[6] At the end of the 16th century, Portuguese missionaries came to Japan and created grammars and dictionaries of Middle Japanese. The 1603–1604 dictionary Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam has 2 entries: nifon[7] and iippon.[8] Since then many derived names of Japan appeared on early-modern European maps."
Thanks, I'll need rabbit hole sometime.
According to the article, people could and did change their names later. It wasn't too late. Record-keeping was a lot looser back then.
(In my case, I heard a family legend that it was an elementary school teacher, but who knows?)
As kind of an aside, is there something about my writing style that's misleading? I didn't say "too late" in my comment, just that they couldn't fix it at the time of arrival.
I assume that if you had to go through some later process to make corrections, many people either couldn't be bothered to go through it or didn't understand the process. One time the DMV misspelled my name when registering a used car I'd purchased from a private party. I initially dragged my feet on correcting it, but the misspelling started showing up on my credit report and junk mail. It was a pain to change it, and it still shows as a prior alias on my credit report.
I'm guessing that is the source of the confusion.
I skimmed and misread. Sorry about that! (Quotes removed.)
But it raises a question: what were records archived from ship manifests used for? Why would an immigrant care if they were incorrect? I found this:
From: The Creation and Destruction of Ellis Island Immigration Manifests: Part 1
Many people travelled back and forth between the US and Europe and so I suppose they might need a Reentry Permit. But suppose they didn't? I guess sometimes they might need a Certificate of Arrival, but what was that for? Apparently it could be used to prove residence requirements for becoming a US citizen:
From Naturalization Records:
I'd guess that courts would accept other proofs of residence too. Going back to the original article, people could change their names when becoming a citizen:
So, yeah, those records likely had errors, but it didn't mean they had to stick to using the same name. It's just... records have errors sometimes.
I think it was initially a sort of euphemism. They changed it when they immigrated, not meaning to imply it was forced upon them.
It certainly happened with my family name in one way or another, many consanents and accented characters were normalized away, even before the advent of ASCII. I suspect it was intentional, by my grandparents, moving to a country where the dominant language is English without accented characters in the alphabet was bound to cause problems sooner or later. Incidentally my grandparents met at Ellis Island, both emmigrating from Germany/Poland in that akward time between WW1 and WW2. So that may well have been part of the euphemism.
I suspect either documentation or cultural errors. Everything was handwritten, a busy clerk checking people in verbally didn't neccessarily bother to ask how to spell a name.
It still well could have been forced on them -- just through softer means than a literal guy at Ellis Island writing it down wrong. There were serious social pressures to change your name, particularly if you weren't from a WASP background. It's not hard to see some coercive pressure to Anglicize your family name if your family and kids get treated visibly worse for it because it's an obvious sign that you're part of an othered ethnic group.
You've left everything you know behind to come to a far away country and the first thing you do is let some clerk take away your name, one of the few things you have at that point? The idea that any one person would just accept that mistake as their life now, let alone enough people for it to be a systemic problem never made any sense to me.
You've left everything you know behind to come to a far away country and the first thing you do is talk back to a functionary of the government of the place you've just landed? The idea that someone would decide to not risk their future by backtalking the government agent is all too plausible.
A few years ago I found a couple of the original documents of my family's name change that had been in the possession of an older relative who'd forgotten about them. the family name had always been a source of curiosity because the current family name isn't all that close to something people expect from that part of the world but if you squint, sometimes people go "oh, of course". But no, not really. No one else has this surname and it's completely different than the original. The similarities end at sharing one of the same letters. That's it.
I had always thought it would've happened during the immigration process, but it didn't, it happened during the naturalization process. I even have the letter my great-grandfather received explaining that "yes, this man one lived in this town and was born on such-and-such date and now seeks to become an American citizen," signed by the mayor of the town he was born in as proof that my great-grandfather was who he claimed. Then there's a document saying "and now the surname is this" and that's it. Name changed, apparently.
So now that question is answered, but I have two bigger questions. Why this name specifically and why was changing the surname so important? We'll never know and, frankly, it doesn't change anything. For better or worse, I am who I am, I'm not my ancestors and knowing more about them wouldn't change that.