My own family name is misspelled from its Old Country original, but there is no way to know who misspelled it. The first of the line to come over may have been illiterate even in his own language, so wouldn’t have been much help.
This probably isn’t a true story, but it’s amusing, if it didn’t happen it could have, and is directly related to the topic.
There’s a prestigious Chasidic Rabbi in NYC. His name is Rabbi Sean Ferguson. When asked about his name, he’d explain that he was a very very nervous 17 year old when he came through Ellis Island. He was so nervous that when the immigration official asked him what his name was, he said “I forget my name”. Of course, he had also forgotten his English and answered in Yiddish; “Shoyn fargesin”. So the immigration official recorded his name as “Sean Ferguson”.
There seem to be numerous versions of this story. I read it years ago in a book about Ellis Island and there is also this variation:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/substance/summary/v034/34.1mechoulan.html
All of those in my family who came over from various old countries had their names mildly changed - add an R here, remove a CH there. The worst was my mom’s Polish ancestors. However, in tracing her family line, there weren’t just changes made at Ellis Island, every single Census has a variation, church roles differ, death certificates may have yet a different spelling.
I know, in the case of my father’s family, his grandfather added the R to the original German name when he landed here. My father and his youngest brother had the R removed on their birth certificates by their father, but they never used the Rless version.
My father’s father came from the Old Country as an infant, one of 8 brothers. The family name was a long Jewish Polish name that got shortened in two different ways. 4 of the brothers eventually settled on the name I have which is roughly the second half of the original name. 3 of the brothers settled on a name from the first half of the original name. Both names sound vaguely eastern European. 1 brother wanted an American sounding name - so I have some relatives named “Goldberg”.
My relatives came from around there, GGF’s name was more or less “Lord xxxx the 8th”. Immigration official took “the 8th” (in the local dialect) as the last name, Mom’s side of the family stuck with it ever since. But that’s understandable, just a translation issue.
My family name was changed when my grandfather came to America. It’s very easy to see why.
My wife went digging on ancestry.com and other genealogy web sites that she frequents, and couldn’t find anything at all for my grandfather under the current spelling of our name. I reminded her that he spoke very poor English, and gave her about a dozen different variations on how the name might be spelled if pronounced phonetically-ish from the original Greek. She found three different spellings of his name, all written in big blocky kindergarten style letters, and none of them matching up with the current spelling of my last name. On his citizenship application, he misspelled EVERY SINGLE LINE on the form, including his own name (he spelled John as GOHN because he didn’t know how to correctly spell it in English). For his address, he misspelled the name of the street, the name of the city, and even screwed up the name of the state.
You can just imagine a frustrated immigration worker taking his best guess and running with it.
On the later forms, he at least spelled his name as “John” consistently, but the spelling of his last name is different on every form. I don’t know how or when it changed to its present spelling.
My father spoke Greek around the house growing up,l and didn’t learn English at all until he went to kindergarten. I don’t think my grandfather ever learned to speak English very well.
And that’s how engineer_comp_greek became engineer_comp_geek!
Another silly anecdote that probably isn’t true, but I saw it in Reader’s Digest, so it must be true . . .
Story of the obviously Asian dude named Bjorn Svensen, or some such. It seems a Scandinavian dude came through the line, and announced his name as Bjorn Svensen, so that was his name. Next guy in line, Asian, said his name was Sam Ting. So the immigration official wrote down Bjorn Svensen for him too.
Yes, but they had that “last name” when they boarded a ship from Italy, coming to America. I do quite a bit of genealogy, and just viewed the ship’s manifests of passengers from 1890-1910. They were listed with that last name. So, you didn’t show up at Ellis Island with no last name. As RealityChuck said earlier, the names were no doubt taken from ship’s manifests. Names were not likely “made up” randomly on the spot.
We did not come through Ellis island. Not everyone did.
And their new name may well have been a ship’s manifest, but if so, they weren’t aware of it and it might have been added on the European side of the voyage instead of the American.
We have a couple of genealogists in the family and so far they’ve confirmed the story, that when these folks hit the US the immigration people recorded them with the new surnames (a few years later all the names were legally changed to match the one they finally settled on). But, again, they were Sephardic/German names and my grandparents were unquestionably Russian Jews with no surnames when they fled Russia. So, somewhere between there and here they somehow acquired them, and if that was planned why three different surnames?
People without surnames crossing international borders can have issues today and there are all sorts of work-arounds. Icelanders use patrynomics ending in either -son or -dottir depending on the person’s gender. People like Sherpas often don’t have that or a surname and frequently just tack “Sherpa” on as a last name. Some double up their name. Some use their place of origin as a surname, as already noted upthread.
So, yeah, I can imagine it was unusual or rare for someone from Western Europe with a surname to have more than a minor spelling change unless they deliberately wanted the change. I’m not sure how much research has been done on those without surnames.
“Name?”
“Stangya Soren’tzah.”
“Right. You’re Sam Francisco.”
Stuff happens even today. I had a friend with just one name visit the states, and they wouldn’t process his paperwork without a last name. So he just doubled his name.
I had a Ukrainian neighbor who hasn’t picked out a name before her daughter was born, and the social worker was in a hurry to get the paperwork filled out after the birth. This being California, the social worker assumed the family was of Latino decent (!), and suggested a very stereotypically Mexican name (actually, a nickname). The Ukrainian family, assuming the social worker was suggesting a typical American name agreed.
A friend of mine changed her name from a standard name to just a single name. When she tried tried to change her name at he university they told her that she had to have a last name but didn’t have to have a first name so her single name was her “last” name.