Name Changes at Ellis Island

One of the most common stories in American family lore is that officials at Ellis Island changed an
immigrant ancestor's name. It's a persistent myth and one that isn't true.

For the 125th anniversary of the opening of Ellis Island, Smithsonian.com examines the history of immigration in the US and explains the truth about immigration officials and names. Here are a few key points from the article:

Ellis Island inspectors were not responsible for recording immigrants’ names. Instead, any error likely happened overseas.

At the shipping line’s station in Europe, a clerk wrote the passenger’s name in the ship’s manifest, sometimes without asking for identification verifying the spelling.

The ship’s manifest was presented to Ellis Island inspectors after the boat docked. From there, the inspector would cross-reference the name on the manifest with the immigrant passenger, and also ask 30 questions to screen out rabble-rousers, loafers, or the physically and mentally infirm, but also to glean information on who they would be living with and where in America, says Urban. The inspectors also would see if the answers matched those recorded by the shipping clerk before departure.

“If anything, Ellis Island officials were known to correct mistakes in passenger lists,” says Philip Sutton, a librarian in the Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, at the New York Public Library, in a blog post delving into the name change mythology.

More commonly, immigrants themselves would change their names, either to sound more American, or to melt into the immigrant community, where they were going to live, says Sutton. If name changes happened with any frequency on Ellis Island, it was not noted in any contemporaneous newspaper accounts or in recollections from inspectors, Sutton says. 

It is also unlikely a foreign name would flummox an Ellis Island inspector. From 1892 to 1924, “one-third of all immigrant inspectors were themselves foreign-born, and all immigrant inspectors spoke an average of three languages,” says the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 

Read the entire article to learn more about immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Surname Meanings and History

Understanding the history of your ancestors' surnames may help you with your genealogy research and can give you a clue as to your ancestors' lives.

Most surnames fall into four categories:

• Descendants/Given names -- prefixes or suffixes are added to a given name to establish a relationship. e.g. Anderson, O'Connor, Fitzgerald, MacDonald.
• Occupational names -- indicates a person's career. e.g. Baker, Brewer, Miller, Smith.
• Geographic or location names -- derived from where a person lived. This could be a place name, e.g. London, or describe the landscape, e.g. Hill, Pond.  
• Nicknames or descriptive names -- suggest a person's distinguishing characteristic, e.g. Short, Brown, Long, Fairchild.

Name dictionaries use historical documents to trace a name throughout history. Several of the dictionaries in the Genealogy & Local History Room can tell you a name's meaning and etymology and may help you place the name in historical and geographical context.

Some of the best dictionaries for American name research include:

• Dictionary of American Family Names
• Family Names: How Our Surnames Came to America

Also look for dictionaries for your specific ethnic group. For example: 

British: British Family Names: Their Origin and Meaning With Lists of Scandinavian, Frisian, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman Names 

Chinese: In Search of Your Asian Roots: Genealogical Research on Chinese Surnames

German: German-American Names

Hispanic: Hispanic Surnames and Family History

Irish: Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall: Irish Names and Surnames 

Italian: Our Italian Surnames

Jewish: A Dictionary of Jewish Names and Their History
Polish: Polish Surnames: Origins & Meanings

Look for more name dictionaries in the Genealogy & Local History Room.

Researching Common Last Names

Trying to find ancestors with common surnames can be daunting. Dr. Henry Louis Gates and Meaghan Siekman offer some helpful research strategies in their genealogy column at The Root.

In particular, I like their idea of researching related families:

Even if people in one of your lines had a common surname, they may have married or were closely associated with people who had less-common surnames. If your Tom Jones married Catharine Hornburg, you’ll want to focus on researching the Hornburg family. Documents for associated families, particularly land and probate records, may mention your ancestors. 

In addition to families that married into your Jones family, pay attention to their neighbors or to people who served as witnesses to your family’s wills, land records, marriages and births. People often migrated and settled with people they knew, and if you notice a pattern of the same surnames always living near your family or participating in major events of the family, it may be worth doing a bit of research on them, too.

Great tip!

World Names

In what locations throughout the world does your surname occur? to which countries did your ancestors emigrate and settle down?

Search for a surname to view its map and statistics on PublicProfiler/WorldNames.

Once you know where those surnames occur, you have more options for tracing your heritage.

Type a surname into the search box, and click the search button (it doesnot work as well if you press the enter button.) The color coded map will inidcate location of greatest occurrence; and if you click on that location, you will see an expanded map showing name distribution in greater detail.

Phonebooks for those countries, or social networking genealogy websites, will put you in touch with your distant cousins.

Happy Genealogy Day!

Celebrate Your Name Week, March 1-7, is sponsored by Names Universe, and Saturday is Genealogy Day.

Join in on one of the world's fastest growing hobbies and celebrate names at the same time. Get genealogy tips, hints, and ideas, then begin the journey to knowing your heritage name by name, one ancestor at a time.

Enrich your genealogical research by learning about naming traditions, the changing of immigrant names. the meanings of Personal names , and the ethnic origins of surnames.