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
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