In my experience, the often repeated idea that the authorities at ELLIS ISLAND, the dropping off point for STEERAGE PASSENGERS in the port of New York for a long period during the industrial boom, CHANGED THE NAMES of those coming through is completely false.
MAYBE SOME ANCESTOR used this as an EXCUSE for their own decision to change their name. However this was absolutely not within the authority or practice of those harried clerks, most English speaking only, maybe some who knew German, who had a huge number of people to process.
On most ship manifests I've read I see that immigrants were often counted by ethnicity. That is to say, you see Poles with Poles and Hungarians with Hungarians, and Jews with Jews, per CLASS of ticket.
Having used both microfilms and databases I have read a lot of BAD HANDWRITING (which then gets transferred at the typists best guess into databases) and a lot of names that were given a phonetic spelling. I've found the same passenger's name spelled one way on the HAMBURG lists (the departure point of many steamships) and another on the manifests coming into New York. READING BOTH is a good idea.
I believe that mistakes were made with misunderstandings due to not knowing the language spoken or out of hurry and exhaustion. Further, I have seen these same kind of mistakes on census where certain assumptions were also made. For instance a child might be listed as "SARAH" because a parent called her "SALLY" when her real name is something else.
Given documentation and over time, the family always seems to revert to the given name, or is in agreement about a spelling or name change. The exception to this truism - and every case is different - is in African American familys shortly after slavery.
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