H. L. Mencken

“ 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. ”

“ 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. [27] This feeling, perhaps, accounted for a good many changes of surnames among Germans and Jews of German name upon the entrance of the United States into the war. ”

“ 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 or even without any legal process whatever.
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 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. ”

“ But in America, with a language of peculiar vowel-sounds and even consonant-sounds struggling against a foreign invasion unmatched for strength and variety, such changes have been far more numerous than across the ocean, and the legal rule of idem sonans is of much wider utility than anywhere else in the world. ”

“ It is no exaggeration, indeed, to say that whereever the old stock comes into direct and unrestrained conflict with one of these new stocks, it tends to succumb, or, at all events, to give up the battle. The Irish, in the big cities of the East, attained to a truly impressive political power long before the first nativeborn generation of them had grown up. ”

“ Van Schaick, an old New York Dutch name, is pronounced Von Scoik, though the hard Dutch sh-sound in other New York names, e. g., Schurman, has been softened. 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ General J. J. Pershing is the descendant of an Alsatian named Pfoersching, who immigrated to America in the eighteenth century; the name was at first debased to Pershin; in 1838 the final g was restored. General W. S. Rosecrans was really a Rosenkrantz. Even the surname of Abraham Lincoln, according to some authorities, was an anglicized form of the German Linkhorn. [12]
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. ”

“ That Smith, Brown and Miller remain in first, second and third places among the surnames of New York is surely no sound evidence of Anglo-Saxon survival. The German and Scandinavian Schmidt has undoubtedly contributed many a Smith, and Braun many a Brown, and Müller many a Miller. In the same way Johnson, which holds first place among Chicago surnames, and Anderson, which holds third, are plainly reinforced from Scandinavian sources, and the former may also owe something to the Russian Ivanof. Miller is a relatively rare name in England; it is not among the fifty most common. ”

“ In the New York city directory the fourth most common name is now Murphy, an Irish name, and the fifth most common is Meyer, which is German and often Jewish. The Meyers are the Smiths of Austria, and of most of Germany. They outnumber all other clans. After them come the Schultzes and Krauses, just as the Joneses and Williamses follow the Smiths in Great Britain. Schultze and Kraus do not seem to be very common names in New York, but Schmidt, Muller, Schneider and Klein appear among the fifty commonest. ”

“ Practically any other list of Americans would show many names of the same sort. Indeed, every American telephone directory offers plenty of evidence that, despite the continued political and cultural preponderance of the original English strain, the American people have quite ceased to be authentically English in race, or even, as a London weekly has said, “predominantly of British stock.” [1] The blood in their arteries is inordinately various and inextricably mixed, but yet not mixed enough to run a clear stream. ”

“ The immigrant, in a time of extraordinary suspicion and difficulty, tried to get rid of at least one handicap. [28]
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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Myers, as we have seen, is a common surname in Philadelphia. So are Fox and Snyder. In some part, at least, they have been reinforced by the Pennsylvania German Myer, Fuchs and Schneider. Sometimes Müller changes to Miller, sometimes to Muller, and sometimes it remains unchanged, but with the spelling made Mueller. Muller and Mueller do not appear among the commoner names in Philadelphia; nearly all the Müllers seem to have become Millers, thus putting Miller in second place. ”

“ 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 contempt. Our unmatchable vocabulary of derisive names for foreigners reveals the national attitude. ”

“ There are whole regions in the Southwest in which López and Gonzales are far commoner names than Smith, Brown or Jones, and whole regions in the Middle West wherein Olson is commoner than either Taylor or Williams, and places both North and South where Duval is at least as common as Brown. ”

“ This last 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. [35] The Jews go further with such changes than any other people. They struggle very hard for position, and try to rid themselves of every unnecessary handicap. Moreover, they are supported by the historical name-shedding of a very eminent Jew, the Saul of Tarsus who became Paul. ”

“ So with the kn in the German names of the Knapp class; they are nearly 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, Ranft is pronounced Ranf; Frémont, losing both accent and the French e, becomes Freemont; the names in -thal take the English th sound ”

“ They are unknown to genuinely British nomenclature.↑ I suggest that the eminent American surgeon, George W. Crile, may be a descendant of some early Kreil. His mother’s name was Deeds. During the World War, when an American officer named Deeds was under attack, it was alleged that the original form of his name was Dietz.↑ A great many more such transliterations and modifications are listed by Faust, op. cit., particularly in his first volume. Others are in Pennsylvania Dutch, by S. S. Haldemann ”

“ The Know Nothing movement, which was chiefly aimed at the Irish, extended from 1852 to 1860.↑ Richard T. Ely: Outlines of Economics, 3rd rev. ed.; New York, 1916, p. 68.↑ Cf. Seth K. Humphrey: Mankind; New York, 1917, p. 45.↑ Cf. William G. Searle: Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum; Cambridge, 1897.↑ A correspondent suggests that Zvan may be a misprint for Ivan. But what of the other strange names in the group?↑ World Almanac, 1914, p. 668.↑ It was announced by the Bureau of War Risk Insurance on March 30, 1918, that there were then 15,000 Millers in the United States Army. ”