Part 28

Such changes, in fact, are almost innumerable; every work upon American genealogy is full of examples. The first foreign names to undergo the process were Dutch and French. Among the former, /Reiger/ was debased to /Riker/, /Van de Veer/ to /Vandiver/, /Van Huys/ to /Vannice/, /Van Siegel/ to /Van Sickle/, /Van Arsdale/ to /Vannersdale/, and /Haerlen/ (or /Haerlem/) to /Harlan/;[12] among the latter, /Petit/ became /Poteet/, /Caillé/ changed to /Kyle/, /De la Haye/ to /Dillehay/, /Dejean/ to /Deshong/, /Guizot/ to /Gossett/, /Guereant/ to /Caron/, /Soule/ to /Sewell/, /Gervaise/ to /Jarvis/, /Bayle/ to /Bailey/, /Fontaine/ to /Fountain/, /Denis/ to /Denny/, /Pebaudière/ to /Peabody/, /Bon Pas/ to /Bumpus/ and /de l'Hôtel/ to /Doolittle/. "Frenchmen and French Canadians who came to New England," says Schele de Vere, "had to pay for such hospitality as they there received by the sacrifice of their names. The brave /Bon Coeur/, Captain Marryatt tells us in his Diary, became Mr. /Bunker/, and gave his name to Bunker's Hill."[13] But it was the German immigration that provoked the first really wholesale slaughter. A number of characteristic German sounds--for example, that of /ü/ and the guttural in /ch/ and /g/--are almost impossible to the Anglo-Saxon pharynx, and so they had to go. Thus, /Bloch/ was changed to /Block/ or /Black/, /Ochs/ to [Pg275] /Oakes/, /Hock/ to /Hoke/, /Fischbach/ to /Fishback/, /Albrecht/ to /Albert/ or /Albright/, and /Steinweg/ to /Steinway/, and the /Grundwort/, /bach/, was almost universally changed to /baugh/, as in /Brumbaugh/. The /ü/ met the same fate: /Grün/ was changed to /Green/, /Führ/ to /Fear/ or /Fuhr/, /Wärner/ to /Warner/, /Düring/ to /Deering/, and /Schnäbele/ to /Snavely/, /Snabely/ or /Snively/. In many other cases there were changes in spelling to preserve vowel sounds differently represented in German and English. Thus, /Blum/ was changed to /Bloom/,[14], /Reuss/ to /Royce/, /Koester/ to /Kester/, /Kuehle/ to /Keeley/, /Schroeder/ to /Schrader/, /Stehli/ to /Staley/, /Weymann/ to /Wayman/, /Friedmann/ to /Freedman/, /Bauman/ to /Bowman/, and /Lang/ (as the best compromise possible) to /Long/. The change of /Oehm/ to /Ames/ belongs to the same category; the addition of the final /s/ represents a typical effort to substitute the nearest related Anglo-Saxon name. Other examples of that effort are to be found in /Michaels/ for /Michaelis/, /Bowers/ for /Bauer/, /Johnson/ for /Johannsen/, /Ford/ for /Furth/, /Hines/ for /Heintz/, /Kemp/ for /Kempf/, /Foreman/ for /Fuhrmann/, /Kuhns/ or /Coons/ for /Kuntz/, /Hoover/ for /Huber/, /Levering/ for /Liebering/, /Jones/ for /Jonas/, /Swope/ for /Schwab/, /Hite/ or /Hyde/ for /Heid/, /Andrews/ for /André/, /Young/ for /Jung/, and /Pence/ for /Pentz/.[15]

The American antipathy to accented letters, mentioned in the chapter on spelling, is particularly noticeable among surnames. An immigrant named /Fürst/ inevitably becomes plain /Furst/ in the United States, and if not the man, then surely his son. /Löwe/, in the same way, is transformed into /Lowe/ (pro. /low/),[16] [Pg276] /Lürmann/ into /Lurman/, /Schön/ into /Schon/, /Suplée/ into /Suplee/ or /Supplee/, /Lüders/ into /Luders/ and /Brühl/ into /Brill/. Even when no accent betrays it, the foreign diphthong is under hard pressure. Thus the German /oe/ disappears, and /Loeb/ is changed to /Lobe/ or /Laib/, /Oehler/ to /Ohler/, /Loeser/ to /Leser/, and /Schoen/ to /Schon/ or /Shane/. In the same way the /au/ in such names as /Rosenau/ changes to /aw/. So too, the French /oi/-sound is disposed of, and /Dubois/ is pronounced /Doo-bóys/, and /Boileau/ acquires a first syllable rhyming with /toil/. So with the /kn/ in the German names of the /Knapp/ class; they are all pronounced, probably by analogy with /Knight/, as if they began with /n/. So with /sch/; /Schneider/ becomes /Snyder/, /Schlegel/ becomes /Slagel/, and /Schluter/ becomes /Sluter/. If a foreigner clings to the original spelling of his name he must usually expect to hear it mispronounced. /Roth/, in American, quickly becomes /Rawth/; /Frémont/, losing both accent and the French /e/, become /Freemont/; /Blum/ begins to rhyme with /dumb/; /Mann/ rhymes with /van/, and /Lang/ with /hang/; /Krantz/, /Lantz/ and their cognates with /chance/; /Kurtz/ with /shirts/; the first syllable of /Gutmann/ with /but/; the first of /Kahler/ with /bay/; the first of /Werner/ with /turn/; the first of /Wagner/ with /nag/. /Uhler/, in America, is always /Youler/. /Berg/ loses its German /e/-sound for an English /u/-sound, and its German hard /g/ for an English /g/; it becomes identical with the /berg/ of /iceberg/. The same change in the vowel occurs in /Erdmann/. In /König/ the German diphthong succumbs to a long /o/, and the hard /g/ becomes /k/; the common pronunciation is /Cone-ik/. Often, in /Berger/, the /g/ becomes soft, and the name rhymes with /verger/. It becomes soft, too, in /Bittinger/. In /Wilstach/ and /Welsbach/ the /ch/ becomes a /k/. In /Anheuser/ the /eu/ changes to a long /i/. The final /e/, important in German, is nearly always silenced; /Dohme/ rhymes with /foam/; /Kühne/ becomes /Keen/.

In addition to these transliterations, there are constant translations of foreign proper names. "Many a Pennsylvania /Carpenter/," says Dr. Oliphant,[17] "bearing a surname that is English, from the French, from the Latin, and there a Celtic loan-word [Pg277] in origin, is neither English, nor French, nor Latin, nor Celt, but an original German /Zimmermann/."[18] A great many other such translations are under everyday observation. /Pfund/ becomes /Pound/; /Becker/, /Baker/; /Schumacher/, /Shoemaker/; /König/, /King/; /Weisberg/, /Whitehill/; /Koch/, /Cook/;[19] /Neuman/, /Newman/; /Schaefer/, /Shepherd/ or /Sheppard/; /Gutmann/, /Goodman/; /Goldschmidt/, /Goldsmith/; /Edelstein/, /Noblestone/; /Steiner/, /Stoner/; /Meister/, /Master(s)/; /Schwartz/, /Black/; /Weiss/, /White/; /Weber/, /Weaver/; /Bucher/, /Booker/; /Vogelgesang/, /Birdsong/; /Sontag/, /Sunday/, and so on. Partial translations are also encountered, /e. g./, /Studebaker/ from /Studebecker/, and /Reindollar/ from /Rheinthaler/. By the same process, among the newer immigrants, the Polish /Wilkiewicz/ becomes /Wilson/, the Bohemian /Bohumil/ becomes /Godfrey/, and the Bohemian /Kovár/ and the Russian /Kuznetzov/ become /Smith/. Some curious examples are occasionally encountered. Thus Henry /Woodhouse/, a gentleman prominent in aeronautical affairs, came to the United States from Italy as Mario Terenzio Enrico /Casalegno/; his new surname is simply a translation of his old one. And the /Belmonts/, the bankers, unable to find a euphonious English equivalent for their German-Jewish patronymic of /Schönberg/, chose a French one that Americans could pronounce.

In part, as I say, these changes in surname are enforced by the sheer inability of Americans to pronounce certain Continental consonants, and their disinclination to remember the Continental vowel sounds. Many an immigrant, finding his name constantly mispronounced, changes its vowels or drops some of its consonants; many another shortens it, or translates it, or changes it entirely for the same reason. Just as a well-known Graeco-French poet changed his Greek name of /Papadiamantopoulos/ to /Moréas/ because /Papadiamantopoulos/ was too much for Frenchmen, and as an eminent Polish-English novelist [Pg278] changed his Polish name of /Korzeniowski/ to /Conrad/ because few Englishmen could pronounce /owski/ correctly, so the Italian or Greek or Slav immigrant, coming up for naturalization, very often sheds his family name with his old allegiance, and emerges as /Taylor/, /Jackson/ or /Wilson/. I once encountered a firm of Polish Jews, showing the name of /Robinson & Jones/ on its sign-board, whose partners were born /Rubinowitz/ and /Jonas/. I lately heard of a German named /Knoche/--a name doubly difficult to Americans, what with the /kn/ and the /ch/--who changed it boldly to /Knox/ to avoid being called /Nokky/. A Greek named /Zoyiopoulous/, /Kolokotronis/, /Mavrokerdatos/ or /Constantinopolous/ would find it practically impossible to carry on amicable business with Americans; his name would arouse their mirth, if not their downright ire. And the same burden would lie upon a Hungarian named /Beniczkyné/ or /Gyalui/, or /Szilagyi/, or /Vezercsillagok/. Or a Finn named /Kyyhkysen/, or /Jääskelainen/, or /Tuulensuu/, or /Uotinen/,--all honorable Finnish patronymics. Or a Swede named /Sjogren/, or /Schjtt/, or /Leijonhufvud/. Or a Bohemian named /Srb/, or /Hrubka/. Or, for that matter, a German named /Kannengiesser/, or /Schnapaupf/, or /Pfannenbecker/.

But more important than this purely linguistic hostility, there is a deeper social enmity, and it urges the immigrant to change his name with even greater force. For a hundred years past all the heaviest and most degrading labor of the United States has been done by successive armies of foreigners, and so a concept of inferiority has come to be attached to mere foreignness. In addition, these newcomers, pressing upward steadily in the manner already described, have offered the native a formidable, and considering their lower standards of living, what has appeared to him to be an unfair competition on his own plane, and as a result a hatred born of disastrous rivalry has been added to his disdain. Our unmatchable vocabulary of derisive names for foreigners reveals the national attitude. The French /boche/, the German /hunyadi/ (for Hungarian),[20] and the old English /froggy/ (for Frenchman) seem lone and feeble beside our great repertoire: [Pg279] /dago/, /wop/, /guinea/, /kike/, /goose/, /mick/, /harp/,[21] /bohick/, /bohunk/, /square-head/, /greaser/, /canuck/, /spiggoty/,[22] /chink/, /polack/, /dutchie/, /scowegian/, /hunkie/ and /yellow-belly/. This disdain tends to pursue an immigrant with extraordinary rancor when he bears a name that is unmistakably foreign and hence difficult to the native, and open to his crude burlesque. Moreover, the general feeling penetrates the man himself, particularly if he be ignorant, and he comes to believe that his name is not only a handicap, but also intrinsically discreditable--that it wars subtly upon his worth and integrity.[23] This feeling, perhaps, accounted for a good many changes of surnames among Germans upon the entrance of the United States into the war. But in the majority of cases, of course, the changes so copiously reported--/e. g./, from /Bielefelder/ to /Benson/, and from /Pulvermacher/ to /Pullman/--were merely efforts at protective coloration. The immigrant, in a time of extraordinary suspicion and difficulty, tried to get rid of at least one handicap.[24] [Pg280]

This motive constantly appears among the Jews, who face an anti-Semitism that is imperfectly concealed and may be expected to grow stronger hereafter. Once they have lost the faith of their fathers, a phenomenon almost inevitable in the first native-born generation, they shrink from all the disadvantages that go with Jewishness, and seek to conceal their origin, or, at all events, to avoid making it unnecessarily noticeable.[25] To this end they modify the spelling of the more familiar Jewish surnames, turning /Levy/ into /Lewy/, /Lewyt/, /Levitt/, /Levin/, /Levine/, /Levey/, /Levie/[26] and even /Lever/, /Cohen/ into /Cohn/, /Cahn/, /Kahn/, /Kann/, /Coyne/ and /Conn/, /Aarons/ into /Arens/ and /Ahrens/ and /Solomon/ into /Salmon/, /Salomon/ and /Solmson/. In the same way they shorten their long names, changing /Wolfsheimer/ to /Wolf/, /Goldschmidt/ to /Gold/, and /Rosenblatt/, /Rosenthal/, /Rosenbaum/, /Rosenau/, /Rosenberg/, /Rosenbusch/, /Rosenblum/, /Rosenstein/, /Rosenheim/ and /Rosenfeldt/ to /Rose/. Like the Germans, they also seek refuge in translations more or less literal. Thus, on the East Side of New York, /Blumenthal/ is often changed to /Bloomingdale/, /Schneider/ to /Taylor/, /Reichman/ to /Richman/, and /Schlachtfeld/ to /Warfield/. /Fiddler/, a common Jewish name, becomes /Harper/; so does /Pikler/, which is Yiddish for /drummer/. /Stolar/, which is a Yiddish word borrowed from the Russian, signifying /carpenter/, is often changed to /Carpenter/. /Lichtman/ and /Lichtenstein/ become /Chandler/. /Meilach/, which is Hebrew for /king/, becomes /King/, and so does /Meilachson/. The strong tendency to seek English-sounding equivalents for names of noticeably foreign origin changes /Sher/ into /Sherman/, /Michel/ into /Mitchell/, /Rogowsky/ into /Rogers/, /Kolinsky/ into /Collins/, /Rabinovitch/ into /Robbins/, /Davidovitch/ into /Davis/, /Moiseyev/ into /Macy/ or /Mason/, and /Jacobson/, /Jacobovitch/ and /Jacobovsky/ into /Jackson/. This last [Pg281] change proceeds by way of a transient change to /Jake/ or /Jack/ as a nickname. /Jacob/ is always abbreviated to one or the other on the East Side. /Yankelevitch/ also becomes /Jackson/, for /Yankel/ is Yiddish for /Jacob/.[27]

Among the immigrants of other stocks some extraordinarily radical changes in name are to be observed. Greek names of five, and even eight syllables shrink to /Smith/; Hungarian names that seem to be all consonants are reborn in such euphonious forms as /Martin/ and /Lacy/. I have encountered a /Gregory/ who was born /Grgurevich/ in Serbia; a /Uhler/ who was born /Uhlyarik/; a /Graves/ who descends from the fine old Dutch family of /'sGravenhage/. I once knew a man named /Lawton/ whose grandfather had been a /Lautenberger/. First he shed the /berger/ and then he changed the spelling of /Lauten/ to make it fit the inevitable American mispronunciation. There is, again, a family of /Dicks/ in the South whose ancestor was a /Schwettendieck/--apparently a Dutch or Low German name. There is, yet again, a celebrated American artist, of the Bohemian patronymic of /Hrubka/, who has abandoned it for a surname which is common to all the Teutonic languages, and is hence easy for Americans. The Italians, probably because of the relations established by the Catholic church, often take Irish names, as they marry Irish girls; it is common to hear of an Italian pugilist or politician named /Kelly/ or /O'Brien/. The process of change is often informal, but even legally it is quite facile. The Naturalization Act of June 29, 1906, authorizes the court, as a part of the naturalization of any alien, to make an order changing his name. This is frequently done when he receives his last papers; sometimes, if the newspapers are to be believed, without his solicitation, and even against his protest. If the matter is overlooked at the time, he may change his name later on, like any other citizen, by simple application to a court of record.

Among names of Anglo-Saxon origin and names naturalized long before the earliest colonization, one notes certain American peculiarities, setting off the nomenclature of the United States [Pg282] from that of the mother country. The relative infrequency of hyphenated names in America is familiar; when they appear at all it is almost always in response to direct English influences.[28] Again, a number of English family names have undergone modification in the New World. /Venable/ may serve as a specimen. The form in England is almost invariably /Venables/, but in America the final /s/ has been lost, and every example of the name that I have been able to find in the leading American reference-books is without it. And where spellings have remained unchanged, pronunciations have been frequently modified. This is particularly noticeable in the South. /Callowhill/, down there, is commonly pronounced /Carrol/; /Crenshawe/ is /Granger/; /Hawthorne/, /Horton/; /Heyward/, /Howard/; /Norsworthy/, /Nazary/; /Ironmonger/, /Munger/; /Farinholt/, /Fernall/; /Camp/, /Kemp/; /Buchanan/, /Bohannan/; /Drewry/, /Droit/; /Enroughty/, /Darby/; and /Taliaferro/, /Tolliver/.[29] The English /Crowninshields/ pronounce every syllable of their name; the American /Crowninshields/ commonly make it /Crunshel/. /Van Schaick/, an old New York name, is pronounced /Von Scoik/. A good many American Jews, aiming at a somewhat laborious refinement, change the pronunciation of the terminal /stein/ in their names so that it rhymes, not with /line/, but with /bean/. Thus, in fashionable Jewish circles, there are no longer any /Epsteins/, /Goldsteins/ and /Hammersteins/ but only /Epsteens/, /Goldsteens/ and /Hammersteens/. The American Jews differ further from the English in pronouncing /Levy/ to make the first syllable rhyme with /tea/; the English Jews always make the name /Lev-vy/. To match such [Pg283] American prodigies as /Darby/ for /Enroughty/, the English themselves have /Hools/ for /Howells/, /Sillinger/ for /St. Leger/, /Sinjin/ for /St. John/, /Pool/ for /Powell/, /Weems/ for /Wemyss/, /Kerduggen/ for /Cadogen/, /Mobrer/ for /Marlborough/, /Key/ for /Cains/, /Marchbanks/ for /Marjoribanks/, /Beecham/ for /Beauchamp/, /Chumley/ for /Cholmondeley/, /Trosley/ for /Trotterscliffe/, and /Darby/ for /Derby/, not to mention /Maudlin/ for /Magdalen/.

§ 2

/Given Names/--The non-Anglo Saxon American's willingness to anglicize his patronymic is far exceeded by his eagerness to give "American" baptismal names to his children. The favorite given names of the old country almost disappear in the first native-born generation. The Irish immigrants quickly dropped such names as /Terence/, /Dennis/ and /Patrick/, and adopted in their places the less conspicuous /John/, /George/ and /William/. The Germans, in the same way, abandoned /Otto/, /August/, /Hermann/, /Ludwig/, /Heinrich/, /Wolfgang/, /Albrecht/, /Wilhelm/, /Kurt/, /Hans/, /Rudolf/, /Gottlieb/, /Johann/ and /Franz/. For some of these they substituted the English equivalents: /Charles/, /Lewis/, /Henry/, /William/, /John/, /Frank/ and so on. In the room of others they began afflicting their offspring with more fanciful native names: /Milton/ and /Raymond/ were their chief favorites thirty or forty years ago.[30] The Jews carry the thing to great lengths. At present they seem to take most delight in /Sidney/, /Irving/, /Milton/, /Roy/, /Stanley/ and /Monroe/, but they also call their sons /John/, /Charles/, /Henry/, /Harold/, /William/, /Richard/, /James/, /Albert/, /Edward/, /Alfred/, /Frederick/, /Thomas/, and even /Mark/, /Luke/ and /Matthew/, and their daughters /Mary/, /Gertrude/, /Estelle/, /Pauline/, /Alice/ and /Edith/. As a boy I went to school with many Jewish boys. The commonest given names among them were /Isadore/, /Samuel/, /Jonas/, /Isaac/ and /Israel/. These are seldom bestowed by [Pg284] the rabbis of today. In the same school were a good many German pupils, boy and girl. Some of the girls bore such fine old German given names as /Katharina/, /Wilhelmina/, /Elsa/, /Lotta/, /Ermentrude/ and /Frankziska/. All these have begun to disappear.

The newer immigrants, indeed, do not wait for the birth of children to demonstrate their naturalization; they change their own given names immediately they land. I am told by Abraham Cahan that this is done almost universally on the East Side of New York. "Even the most old-fashioned Jews immigrating to this country," he says, "change /Yosel/ to /Joseph/, /Yankel/ to /Jacob/, /Liebel/ to /Louis/, /Feivel/ to /Philip/, /Itzik/ to /Isaac/, /Ruven/ to /Robert/, and /Moise/ or /Motel/ to /Morris/." Moreover, the spelling of /Morris/, as the position of its bearer improves, commonly changes to /Maurice/, though the pronunciation may remain /Mawruss/, as in the case of Mr. Perlmutter. The immigrants of other stocks follow the same habit. Every Bohemian /Vaclav/ or /Vojtĕch/ becomes a /William/, every /Jaroslav/ becomes a /Jerry/, every /Bronislav/ a /Barney/, and every /Stanislav/ a /Stanley/. The Italians run to /Frank/ and /Joe/; so do the Hungarians and the Balkan peoples; the Russians quickly drop their national system of nomenclature and give their children names according to the American plan. Even the Chinese laundrymen of the big cities become /John/, /George/, /Charlie/ and /Frank/; I once encountered one boasting the name of /Emil/.

The Puritan influence, in names as in ideas, has remained a good deal more potent in American than in England. The given name of the celebrated /Praise-God/ Barebones marked a fashion which died out in England very quickly, but one still finds traces of it in America, /e. g./, in such women's names as /Faith/, /Hope/, /Prudence/, /Charity/ and /Mercy/, and in such men's names as /Peregrine/.[31] The religious obsession of the New England colonists is also kept in mind by the persistence of Biblical names: /Ezra/, /Hiram/, /Ezekial/, /Zachariah/, /Elijah/, /Elihu/, and so on. These [Pg285] names excite the derision of the English; an American comic character, in an English play or novel, always bears one of them. Again, the fashion of using surnames as given names is far more widespread in America than in England. In this country, indeed, it takes on the character of a national habit; fully three out of four eldest sons, in families of any consideration, bear their mothers' surnames as middle names. This fashion arose in England during the seventeenth century, and one of its fruits was the adoption of such well-known surnames as /Stanley/, /Cecil/, /Howard/, /Douglas/ and /Duncan/ as common given names.[32] It died out over there during the eighteenth century, and today the great majority of Englishmen bear such simple given names as /John/, /Charles/ and /William/--often four or five of them--but in America it has persisted. A glance at a roster of the Presidents of the United States will show how firmly it has taken root. Of the ten that have had middle names at all, six have had middle names that were family surnames, and two of the six have dropped their other given names and used these surnames. This custom, perhaps, has paved the way for another: that of making given names of any proper nouns that happen to strike the fancy. Thus General Sherman was named after an Indian chief, /Tecumseh/, and a Chicago judge was baptized /Kenesaw Mountain/[33] in memory of the battle that General Sherman fought there. A late candidate for governor of New York had the curious given name of /D-Cady/.[34] Various familiar American given names, originally surnames, are almost unknown in England, among them, /Washington/, /Jefferson/, /Jackson/, /Lincoln/, /Columbus/ and /Lee/. /Chauncey/ forms a curious addition to the list. It was the surname of the second president of Harvard College, and was bestowed upon their offspring by numbers of his graduates. It then got into [Pg286] general use and acquired a typically American pronunciation, with the /a/ of the first syllable flat. It is never encountered in England.

In the pronunciation of various given names, as in that of many surnames, English and American usages differ. /Evelyn/, in England, is given two syllables instead of three, and the first is made to rhyme with /leave/. /Irene/ is given two syllables, making it /Irene-y/. /Ralph/ is pronounced /Rafe/. /Jerome/ is accented on the first syllable; in America it is always accented on the second.[35]

§ 3