ELLIS ISLAND PASSENGER RECORDS and THE MYTH OF NAME CHANGES and ETHNI NAMES #3

There's a popular myth that passengers debarking from steerage (3rd class) off steamships at ELLIS ISLAND sometimes had their surnames changed by authority figures - clerks. It's not true. 

However, if you were an illiterate passenger who spoke your name in your own language, it's possible that the person hearing and recording your name could make an error. But wait a minute! You have a ticket. You were added to a list of passengers departing from another port where your surname was also recorded, and by someone whose first language was German or your native language. Even if you never went to school and couldn't read and write in your own language, you might have learned to sign your name. (And signing your name might mean that on American census, when asked if you're literate, the answer is yes.)

Did some immigrants change their own names or the spelling of them, given and/or surnames? They did. Sometimes more than once. Usually they did so informally, by use, rather than what we do now, go to court. Making a break from the Old World and starting anew in the New World was an opportunity to develop a new identity. (And yes, some immigrants would drop a religion they felt held them back or disappear and never send for a wife left behind.)

What this has to do with finding an ancestor on a database that includes the port of New York - or really any other port - is that you might be looking for the name of the person to be consistent with the name you know them by, which might be the name on a census or naturalization papers or not.

My experience is that the given name is the first to be changed to be Americanized. There are thousands of Maria's who become Mary's. I found one who became Mammie. That's easy. 

You should always consider the name and its variants, Americanized, then go back to ethnic origins. Doing so and running a given name through databases has helped me find some ancestors whose surnames were really screwed up by census takers and other recorders. Screwed up in spelling or in confusing bad handwriting that was then transcribed into bad text, but not, if you go forward, changed after all.

Take the name Walenty. I found him using not Walter, but Valentine. An accurate translation by the way.

Elizabeta became Betty, Beth, and Lizzy.

Consider Lawrence, a man who self identified as Polish and left a village near the Ukraine, which was Galicia. (But who turned out to be Ruthenian and in Greek Catholic records.) In Polish his name is Wawrzyniec. In German, one of the languages he spoke, Lars. Lorenz, Lauren, or Leuz. In Russian, Lavrent, Levrentiy. And so on. Lawrence went to work as a crew member on a ship where his given and surname were Germanicized.

Although you might think that English versions of a name were prioritized, for central and eastern Europeans, German was a second language so using German equivalents was more comfortable and useful. German speaking people were already in America and used that language in common, especially in the workplace. So I've seen Slavic given and surnames become German by spelling or meaning. 

Consider a name change when your ancestors just doesn't seem to be on records you seek.

C 2021

This post is part of a series of posts focused on Ellis Island, New York Harbor, and Industrial Age immigrants.

VIKING SURNAMES IN GREAT BRITAIN? ARE YOU a SHORT or a MAC MC - SON or SEN

HAVE A SON OR SEN at the end of your surname?  How about having an MC before?  We've heard President Donald Trump may be related to Eric the Red.  What about Mr. Rogers?

DAILY MAIL UK - EXPERTS REVEAL VIKING SURNAMES by Daisy Dunn


EXCERPT:

Dr Alexandra Sanmark, from the University of the Highlands and Islands, said: 'Vikings in Britain can be traced through archaeological evidence, such as burials, place-names, DNA studies, Scandinavian influence on the English language.

BABY NAME BOOKS : GET A CLUE!

I just love baby name books, because of the meanings attributed to the names, and all the different spellings offered.  I wonder, "What would someone named Ursula be like?" (Having never met an Ursula in real life!)

Though there are many baby name books out there, as well as many baby name sites on the web, there simply cannot be a totally comprehensive index of names. 

One of the pleasures of genealogy is coming across names you've never heard of before, names from history, names that have gone out of fashion, names waiting to be resurrected by the naming of a new baby, or perhaps the renaming a poet does for themselves!

Genealogy research - doing those charts - sometimes makes us aware of how a name has been used and repeated in a family for generations. 

One research quest I worked on featured the name Dicey for women.  I don't think I ever made it to the Original Dicey, but I did get back to the family just arrived from Scotland in the 1700's.

Watching the feminine forms of masculine names such as Julianna, the great grandmother of Julius, may or may not give us a clue about the relationship.  In this case, no one in America had ever heard of the great grandmother in Hungary, but I was able to confirm that in childhood it was this woman, not Julius' mother, who provided him care as an infant.  The family must have known it was going to be that way before he was born.

These days there are many creative names.  I find this particularly true in the Black community.  Using baby books and other references I found that one of the most popular Black names in America, Lakeisha, is a made up name.  In other words, not one book I looked at said that it's a name that came from Africa, or some other ethnic group and one book said it was an invention.  (I even have a friend who named her dog Lakeisha!)

Next month, February, I'll be looking into African American research and history once again remembering how interesting using the Freedman Bank Records database is, and the mystery of African-American / Black given and surnames can be.

STATE OF NEW JERSEY SEARCHABLE DATABASES : NAME CHANGES ENLIGHTENIING

If your research is PRE 1900 (or so) New Jersey, the Department of State of New Jersey offers some searchable databases on line. These focus on early colonial and 19th century records. I see a lot of availability and duplication of those records, but HERE IS A GEM! (Link above!)

Legal Name Changes, 1847-1947 may be of some help for researchers focusing on the great age of immigration. You'll find a lot of "ethnic" surnames made shorter or made easier to pronounce or gone Anglo here: Italians, Poles, and Hungarians doing major changes. Some of these however, may just be about adoption, divorce, or not wanting to be associated with bad news relatives.

https://wwwnet1.state.nj.us/DOS/Admin/ArchivesDBPortal/NameChanges.aspx

I love searchable databases THAT RESPOND TO FIRST NAMES as well as surnames like this one Also consider what an ethnic name in another language may translate to in English when you search. Francis, Franko, etc became Frank.

WHAT ABOUT THAT NAME POLLY? IS SHE REALLY MARY?

Everyone knows of people who don't go by the name on their birth certificate at all. Maybe it's as simple as turning their birth certificate name Karen into Caryn.

Maybe from the day they were brought home from the hospital everyone called the baby "Dinky" and it stuck, even though "Dinky" is really Angelica and 56 years old.

And then there is the fact that some people changed their names as simple as that; in the days before your social security number was really a citizenship enrollment number and you could be found through it and your credit you really could arrive in a new town, give yourself a new name, and start a new life.


When you're looking for genealogical records, it's important to know something about naming patterns by ethnicity, by family (once you have the chart together you may notice that a certain name has been passed from grandfather to grandson for generations), and through translation (so she was named Zsa Zsa Now she goes by Susan.)

Some Germans, for instance seem to have given their children up to 4 names, based on pattern, but then called the child by the second name.

In some families children are on census by their nicknames which seem to have no relationship to their birth names. In one family I researched the census taker assumed that a girl named Salley was really Sarah and listed her that way, which was incorrect. (The same census taker turned a girl named Toni into a boy named Anthony.)

Years ago someone who was stuck in their research could not find their Polish ancestor who they said was named Walenty in the New York census. The temptation is first to try various misspellings - or change the W to V (common), or to think maybe the man got called Wally. I found Walenty by researching to find that the English translation of this name is Valentine.

In colonial times a great many girls named Mary got called Polly. I have no idea why. I've just found it to be true many times. Patsy was really Martha...

So, if you can't find them by the name you expect, by all means try to find the name in translation, or by nickname!


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