By Caitlin Hollander
So, having read Part 1, you may now be asking a few questions:
When did my family name change?
Why was I told it was changed at Ellis Island?
You might even be asking the question I ask when I encounter this:
Why did these name changes happen?
As much of the immigrant experience, especially the Jewish immigrant experience, is centered around New York, many of my answers and much of my reasoning will also revolve around New York. So, while the reasons and general social attitudes I cite may be ubiquitous to the Jewish experience, the mechanisms by which the name changes occurred are not. In New York, there were a few routes to legally change one’s name. First, as I explained in part 1, one could change their name during the naturalization process (as my own great grandfather did). Secondly, one could change their name through a legal process: either through the county clerk of where the person resided or through New York Civil Court. Or thirdly, one could change their name by simply using the new name in everyday use. To this day, as long as the intent is not to defraud or present oneself falsely, someone in New York still has the right to adopt any name they like without legal procedure.
This last option was extremely common, especially among poorer immigrants around the turn of the century. Why go through the time, expense, and complication of a lawyer and court when one could simply wake up and decide “now I am John Smith”? The second most common would be through naturalization; a convenient thing for genealogists, where the name changes are noted on a document that is typically easily obtained. The final route, through a court order, is the most interesting for our purposes, as these name changers had to provide reasoning as to why their name needed to be changed.
The books containing the index for many of the name changes processed by the New York County Clerk
A page from the 1911-1923 New York County Clerk name change index book, showing the name change of the Rubenstein family, who became Robins in late 1919
While researching for her fantastic book (which I highly recommend), A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America, Kirsten Fermaglich pulled a large number of name change applications from the courts in New York City. As these records are fairly accessible for me, I decided to do the same. And as she did, I found a wide variety of reasons. Many were to simplify a name; they cited that no one could spell or pronounce it (as was the case with the Lucivjansky family, originally from Slovakia, in 1950; their name was changed to Lawson). But, in many cases, they cited that the name was an obstacle to employment prospects- a reflection of antisemitism. I saw this reason cited by Isidore Abramowitz in 1913; he became Theodore Arnold; the same with Carl Abrahamson, later Carl Auderson, a year later in 1914. This reason was, I suspect, an unstated motivation behind many of the changes I saw; David Lubitz to Gerald Lloyd, the Levy family to Leyson, Hyman Lifschitz to Hal Leeds, Morris Goldberg to Morris Gilbert. Want ads of the era appear to support this; many state that they are a “Christian company”, or outright state “Christian preferred”. Meanwhile, help wanted ads from the same time period that mention Jewishness seem to do so almost apologetically; stating that the family seeking to hire a cook needs one who understands kashrut, or that the hospital seeking a social worker is a Jewish one.
A marked difference can be seen in this pair of ads that appeared beside each other in the March 5, 1920 edition of the New York Herald; the former is seeking a young man to make himself “generally useful” in the office of a large manufacturing firm, and proudly states that they are a Christian company. The latter seeks a young man to work nights in an office and states that he must be “good at figures, willing worker, understanding Jewish [Yiddish]”. The former ad all but outright states that they are seeking a Christian employee; the latter, simply an employee who understands the language. Even in these cases, in which the desire for a Christian employee is not outright stated, it is understood. And so, one can easily picture Hyman Lifschitz becoming Hal Leeds for further economic opportunity, especially as he rose in the white collar world. Similarly, prestigious educational institutions practiced widespread, well-known discrimination against Jews; Emory University Dental is well known for this practice continuing into the 1960s, and Harvard had a famous quota on Jewish students. In the professional world or for those seeking to rise into it, a surname indicating Jewishness could serve as a significant handicap.
But don’t simply take my word for it. In February 1948, an anonymous Jewish American published an article in the Atlantic Monthly (now The Atlantic) entitled “I Changed My Name”. He describes the reasons why he and his brother changed from their birth surname, which he describes as “forthrightly Jewish”, to a name he describes as “both neutral and euphonious”. Citing a lack of religiousness, a lack of connection to his Jewish heritage, and a desire for safety (one that was paramount in the minds of Jews everywhere after the Shoah) he says:
“I just wanted to fool them [antisemites] into the impression that I was human”.
At the same time, though, you see many examples of a name remaining “Jewish”, but simplified in a way to make pronunciation and spelling easier for people in America. Louis Cohen in 1915 became Louis Diamond, Nachum Churelutszky to Nathan Cohen, Rubin Lupchansky to Rubin Lubin and Abraham Chait to Abraham Friedman in 1913. The motivation was not always a reaction to antisemitism, but often (as stated in the petitions) one of simplification. This is also often the case in the only situation that can be found where names were indeed consistently changed for an immigrant- in schools. Even today, international students will often be pressured to use an “American” name that is easier for teachers and peers to pronounce.
A page from the 1911-1923 New York County Clerk name change index book; at the top, you see the entry for Abraham Chait, who became Abraham Friedman. Midway through the page is an entry for Chaim Chasanowitz, who became Hyman Cohen.
Sometimes, this name change happened before even boarding the ship to America; if one had a brother, husband, or uncle in America who had already gone from Rabinowitz to Robins (as David Rabinowitz of New York did in 1921), the immigrant would often adopt this new, shortened name before even boarding the ship. This is why you often see a husband immigrate under one surname, and his wife arrive a year later with their children under the new, shortened name.
So now for the biggest question: If all of this is true, then why was I told that my ancestor had his or her name changed at Ellis Island? Was I lied to?
The answer is, as most answers are, not so straightforward. There are many elements at play; The idea of the name change at Ellis Island is deeply ingrained in American culture from movies such as The Godfather Part II. That image of Ellis Island being the place where name changes occurred permeates our culture – it is why this myth is so pervasive. Ellis Island was often a shorthand for “when we immigrated”; immigrants who did not pass through Ellis Island would often use it as shorthand, even when different ports and even different cities were at play. Often their descendants are shocked when I find a missing passenger manifest that reveals their ancestors entered not through Ellis, but through Boston, San Francisco, Tampa, New Orleans, Galveston, or even into a Canadian port followed by a land border crossing.
As for the idea that “the name was changed for us,” this too comes from a mix of causes. There is, at its essence, an element of shame. In April 1948, a writer named David Cohen responded in the Atlantic Monthly to Anonymous's aforementioned article with one of his own, entitled “I’ve Kept My Name”. He states, in his first sentence, what the examples above showed so well “The most frequent reason for name-changing among Jews is to get jobs in areas where there is marked economic discrimination against them.” But he answers Anonymous’s reasoning with defiance, stating:
“Bearing an unmistakably Jewish name, I am spared the crude comments of virulent anti-Semites, for even they retain a modicum of manners in my presence; and, there being no possibility of mistake, I am not asked to join groups that do not "take" Jews. I am accepted by my fellows as a human being, or I am rejected as a Jew.”
This attitude towards name changing, especially in the Jewish world, grew over time with the counterculture and anti-assimilation movements seen in the 1960s and 1970s and beyond. Attitudes changed too, as laws were created to forbid discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and religion. No longer was a “Jewish name” as much of a social handicap; and when something is not currently a threat, we have a harder time imagining a world where it could be one. And so people, aware that their name had changed at some point, invented a reason why. It could not be their ancestor, after all, they were proudly Jewish, but must be some powerful antisemitic, xenophobic entity.
And so the image of the callous Ellis Island inspector, changing the names of poor immigrants without a thought to their heritage, was born, whitewashing a world in which that proudly Jewish immigrant must change his or her name from Horowitz to Harris, from Goldberg to Gilbert, not out of shame of who they were, but as a strategy to survive and thrive in their new home.