Genealogy Tip: Be Sure To Research Any “Changed Names” Within Your Roots
It is estimated that more than 1.5 million last names are currently used in the United States. This may sound like a large number, but it is relatively small when you think about the tremendous amount of immigrants who have brought numbers of Western and Eastern European names into the country.
Why is this? Basically, because immigrants to this country either got their name changed or were given a new name when they entered the United States. This resulted in many new citizens taking similar names. The most common names in America today like Smith, Jones, Johnson, and Brown are the same as they were around the time of the American Revolution.
The name "Smith" provides a good example of how this worked. Immigrants from different countries whose name meant "blacksmith" for example, the German "Schmidt" or the Italian "Ferraro" adopted the name "Smith" when they reached the shores of America. Thus, what was already a popular, although variously spelled and pronounced, name in many countries was suddenly tunneled into one name in America.
The result was an enormous amount of people having the same name and making that name extraordinarily popular for succeeding generations. The changing of an immigrant's name was done for a variety of reasons. One was to "Americanize" a name.
For instance, many German immigrants discovered that Americans had trouble pronouncing their names, and so "Koch" became "Cook" and "Albrecht" became "Allbright." It was even more common for the name change to be a result of a decision made by an immigration official, especially in the case of Polish immigrants.
Someone from Poland with a name such as "Marcizszewski" would come through, and out of confusion or simply laziness, the immigration official would change the spelling to the closest English pronunciation he could come up with on the spot, such as "Muskie." Welfare agencies and church officials back in an immigrants' native country also often changed spelling, as did our ancestors themselves.
Daniel Boone, for example, was known to have signed his name "Bone" and "Boon" in addition to the spelling we are familiar with, "Boone." Federal census takers also proved inept at recording correct name spelling, and the census of 1790 finds even simple names spelled dozens of ways.
While name variants may not at first seem to be important, they prove crucial when searching for family roots. Keep in mind, you will be looking through all kinds of public records. If you aren't aware of the different spellings of your ancestors' surnames, you may well over-look key pieces of information that could unlock the door that leads to a whole branch of your family tree.
