I am investigating a possible race-discrimination lawsuit and one of the (male) decisionmakers at headquarters has the last name of Rebeil. Can anyone offer any insight on a probable race/ethnicity for someone with that surname?
I apologize for the somewhat insensitive nature of this question but it’s one of the facts that I need to know in order to try to figure out whether the client has any sort of a case.
Thanks in advance.
JohnW77707, Esq.
Try a google search for Rebeil genealogy.
Or a Google search just on Rebeil. Name alone looks insufficient to judge. Certainly many Rebeils are of Hispanic origin (lots of Hispanic first names and hits from Mexican sites), and a very few French; but many more have mainstream US first names, so no conclusion can be made about ethnicity. Can I have my consultation fee now?
I don’t it’s possible that you can call up Mr. Rebeil as ask him what his ethnic background is? Or ask someone who knows him? (That ought to be good enough to find out his race, at least.)
Clearly a rare surname. The Mormon Church’s International Genealogical Index, the world’s largest vital records index, has no entries for “Rebeil” in Continental Europe, the British Isles, North America, South America, Central America, or Africa. And that is with “exact spelling” turned off.
The American Family Immigration History Center’s database of New York/Ellis Island arrivals 1892-1924 has only three “Rebeil” records.
Using “close match”, the database has:
The Social Security Death Index, which contains about 80% of the deaths in the U.S. between 1962 and the present, has four “Rebeil” records:
The Social Security Death Index also has:
No matter what the origin of the surname, that cannot tell you more than half of his ethnic background, and probably far less. I’d consider any company that based racial equality monitoring on employees’ surnames alone as discriminatory.
** GorillaMan**: agreed. I somewhat regret answering the question. Would anyone professionally investigating grounds for a lawsuit ask on a public Q&A forum? Is JohnW77707 by any chance the client?
I’m not the client. I’m the lawyer. And I’m not breaching any confidentiality. I was just wondering, since I’ve never heard the name. It’s just a small part of a big picture.
Since I can’t take his deposition at this point in the game, there’s no way to know for sure; but I figured someone here might have an idea.
JohnW77707, Esq.
And I’m not breaching any confidentiality
Except by naming a potential party in a lawsuit, one with an uncommon surname at that. Seriously, do you think asking in an international public forum is an appropriate way to go about this research? In your position - assuming I didn’t know how to do the search myself - I’d have asked or hired someone to do it confidentially.
Ray – And I’m not meaning to get into a debate – but there are times, every once in a while, that SD is as good a place to do research as anywhere else. I’ve “answered” others’ legal questions (with the usual caveats about not being firm legal advice, etc.) here before, and when a truly unusual question comes around, I feel like I’m not out of line in trying to get a tough question answered by the Teeming Millions. Sometimes I help answer others’ questions, sometimes I get my questions answered. . . .
After all, this isn’t really a question that lends itself to any deep research. All I had hoped for was a “feel” for the answer, or maybe someone who said “oh yes, I lived next to a family named Rebeil when I was younger, I asked them what kind of a name that was, they told me [fill in the blank ethnicity].”
As I said at the beginning, it’s an unusual question, not meant to be insensitive or inappropriate, perhaps it was, but it was something that I figured was “worth a shot.”
JohnW77707, Esq.
Sounds French.