There is another dictum: "Talk British, think Yiddish!" RT On 5/8/2013 5:37 PM, Christopher Stetson wrote:
In re: "horse-thieves and revolutionaries of all colors among our ancestors." Indeed, even the ancestors of this Mayflower descendant. And don't forget our beloved Anglo-Saxon motto: "Think locally, act globally." :-( Chris. On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 3:50 PM, Roman Turovsky <[1][email protected]> wrote: To tell you how I know this: Some 10 years ago I embarked on a search for a branch of the family that was missing for 80 years in South Africa (their surname was SAUTSCHECK, and the search was successful, all SouthAfrican cousins were found! (the few NorthAmerican were not...)). In the process I came into contact with professional historians/genealogists, and have been bluntly informed by them that THERE WERE NO NAME CHANGES AT ELLIS ISLAND, for aforementioned reasons. What was in fact more common is that many people were traveling with forged, bought or stolen documents. There were horse-thieves and revolutionaries of many colors among our ancestors. RT On 5/8/2013 3:15 PM, Dan Winheld wrote: Name checking against a ship's manifest sounds too logical to be dismissed. More likely mangling happened during hasty, crowded embarkations; where legality & taxonomic scrupulousness were more ephemeral- but the errors only coming to light at Ellis Island, where the shouting itself (according to descendants of the original Choderowski to Toder transformation) finally occurred. Naturalization? Sure- passport office? Not so sure- but maybe any old spelling just to expedite getting out of the old country. Congratulations on bringing Turovsky through the tunnel unscathed, and we know my grandad was himself to blame for surname self-mangling. As one of my wife's other relatives once said ruefully in regard to a surprise spelling- "Vell, I haff alveys pronounced mine wubbleyous mit a "Vee". Dan On 5/8/2013 11:33 AM, [2][email protected] wrote: Dan, The purported "Ellis Island" name manglings is a myth. Every immigrant's name had to be and was matched to the ship's manifest, and any deviation was massively illegal. So any changes people claim were made either at naturalization, or at the passport office in the "old country". Cheers, RT On 5/8/2013 12:05 PM, Dan Winheld wrote: For a while (in the Siena book, anyway) Francesco was "da Parigi"- but in the end just a vacation- "Busman's Holiday". And of course, Alberto da Ripa- who stayed in France, but then Francophoned to "de Rippe", like Jean Paul Paladin- "Had lute, would travel". It can get complicated; Ottaviano dei Petrucci- da Fossombrone & Venezia. Some European surnames imposed on the unwilling were less than complimentary- Katzenellenbogen (Cat's Elbow) for example. And in the United States there is a whole class of newly manufactured names based solely on language mangling at Ellis Island by overworked & undereducated immigration officials. My wife's mother's family name "Choderowski" is now "Toder". My own grandfather, fluent in Russian and French, but not yet English, attempted to anglicise the family name from "Winogradski" to Winheld. Swing and a miss; no one to blame but himself- "Winheld" has no meaning in any terrestrial tongue. -- References 1. mailto:[email protected] 2. mailto:[email protected] To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
