When People Immigrated To The Us, Were They Ever Assigned A New Surname Altogether?
Most of us have ancestors who immigrated to the USA from somewhere else… I remember from history, that during the late 19th century when immigrants were passing through Ellis Island… many of them had names that were altered… shortened, for example.
I was watching a movie the other day that took place during the late 19th century, and it showed the immigrants coming to Ellis Island and a man with a really unusual (unusual by American standards, maybe it was common in his home country) was assigned the name of Smith.
Maybe this is wishful thinking… but is this movie true to history?
I have a surname that I hate because it’s common and sounds, well… redneck. Are there people in the USA whose original family name was something completely different in the ‘old country’ and then the people at Ellis Island changed it when they came to America?
Like I said, maybe it’s just wishful thinking… but I would have given ANYTHING as a child to have been a López, a Pérez or a Gonzalez.
If I were to find out that our original family name was a cool foreign name, then I wouldn’t feel guilty about legally changing it.
It just seems like such a shame that someone with a beautiful Hispanic name would trade it for an ugly redneck name like Williams.
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Comments on When People Immigrated To The Us, Were They Ever Assigned A New Surname Altogether?
Names that were changed completely or shortened were usually done when the person became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Some of their surnames were almost unpronounceable in English and they chose to change them. Some names just didn’t come across well in English, for example……. Ignaz Lipshitz……(he changed it to Irving Lister). There were generally good reasons for immigrants to change their last names. Immigrants wanted to fit in to American culture and society.
Ellis Island never changed people’s names……they may have misspelled them but it wasn’t intentional.
Many foreigners kept the original spelling of their names; just check the phone book!
Most of the changes were effected by the immigrants, in an attempt to blend in.
Sometimes a person wrote what they thought the person said; some names were “Anglisized” (i.e., German names ending with a double “nn” were changed to a single “n”).
As to your changing your surname, that is always an option.