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.
