I recall reading somewhere, perhaps the Ellis Island web site, that immigration officials deny that they ever changed anyone's name. They claim they took the names as they appeared on the passenger manifest and, if names were changed, people did it themselves to assimilate.
 
My grandfather also came from Holland without his name, Monje, being changed. His ancestors, however, had changed it from a French spelling (variously Monie, Monier, Monnier) one or two generations after coming to Holland, evidently to keep the French pronunciation in Dutch phonetics.
 
Best,
Scott Monje

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Subject: name changes


 
When my grandfather came over from Holland - speaking no English - in 1890, no immigration official changed his name from Riepma to, say, Roberts.  When the architect Gaetan Ajello came over in 1906, no one changed his name to Adams.  
 
What was it about European Jewish immigrants - many of whom did not speak Yiddish or Hebrew or use a "different" alphabet - that caused officials to change their names so frequently?   
 
 
Christopher Gray
Office for Metropolitan History
246 West 80th Street, #8, NYC  10024
212-799-0520  fax -0542

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