Wherefore art thou Rosenberg?

The idea that many people coming in from Europe in the early 20th century changed their names at Ellis Island -- or had their names changed for them by immigration — is a persistent one. Immigrants’ names were supposedly switched out for names that could be more easily spelled by Americans or that obscured their ethnicity (or Jewishness). 

Yet there is counter evidence, says Sara Lipton. "A fine scholarly book [A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: a history of Jewish name changing in America by Kirsten Fermaglich] … definitively proved that no names were changed at Ellis; they were changed by legal petition [by the immigrants themselves] between 1920 and 1960.” Nevertheless, Lipton also notes, “many [contemporary Jews] indignantly insist[] that their own family names were indeed changed at Ellis Island.”

“My own father openly told his children that he changed his name because of anti-Semitism,” says Lipton, clearly skeptical of those claiming the changes were imposed. “I doubt he was alone in being so forthright.” Those who changed names, then, wanted to be less a target for the haters. But wouldn’t it be particularly humiliating to change your name for this reason? Where’s your pride in your heritage? Would it make a difference if you felt little connection to the name you were leaving behind? That would make abandoning it easier, wouldn’t it?

“[I]t is worth noting that the names Jews surrendered … were of relatively recent origin. Eastern and Central European Jews only assumed surnames in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when Austrian, Prussian, and Russian laws required them to do so. … [N]ames like Rosenberg, Greenberg, and Lefkowitz were surely not essential links to [honored forefathers]. Isn’t it possible that Jews fleeing persecution and pogroms might have felt little attachment to names imposed by the very governments that had persecuted them, derived from towns and landscapes from which they fled? That they might bear the name Rose no less proudly than Rosenberg?”

By the way, in reference to the Shakespeare-derived title of this post, “wherefore” doesn’t mean “where” but rather “why.” Thus the title post could be rewritten, “Why are you called Rosenberg?”

source: 

“The Jewish Authenticity Trap” by Sara Lipton

The New York Review of Books, November 24, 2022, v.LXIX n.18