It is a common myth that immigration officials changed the names of 
immigrants but it probably did not happen. The immigration passenger lists 
were compiled by the ship's captain or purser (who may or may not have been 
of the same ethnicity as the immigrant) before the ship left port and even 
then, they carried no official weight as far as name changes. In fact I've 
heard that at Ellis Island, they had interpreters who spoke over 50 
languages so that most or all immigrants were interviewed in their native 
language. In any case, immigration officials had no authority to change 
names and no documents were created by the immigration process that could 
have recorded a name change.

It has been speculated that some immigrants, when asked about their name 
change, replied "Ellis Island" when actually meaning the "Ellis Island 
experience", that is, their arrival in a land where everyone found their 
name difficult to manage, and, from personal experience, I know that 
constantly correcting people's pronunciation gets so tiring after a period 
of time that it finally just becomes easier to write Anderly rather than 
Andrle.

Just Google "Ellis Island name change myth" and you'll find quite a few 
references such as this one:
http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=3893

Chris Andrle


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 11:41 AM
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
>
> e: [log in to unmask]
> www.MetroHistory.com
>