Ellis Island Immigration: Fill & Download for Free

No. In fact, the immigration officials at Ellis Island actually never even wrote down the names of incoming immigrants; instead, they merely checked the records from the ships that had been made at the ships’ places of origin. They did not assign people new last names—whether deliberately or by accident.Furthermore, even if the clerks at Ellis Island did somehow manage to change someone’s name, it wouldn’t have made a difference, since, in the United States at that time, anyone could change their name just by telling people to call them by a different name. There were no laws back then about changing your name and, since this was a time before credit cards and before Social Security, changing your name was actually quite easy.Likewise, in those days, you could choose to spell your name however you wanted. If I had lived back then, I could legally decide on a whim to spell my name “Spinsur Aleksandur Mikdanyul” and that would have automatically become the correct spelling of my name. In other words, even if Ellis Island officials somehow changed someone’s name, the person could choose to just continue using the same name they were using before and no one could force them to adopt the name they were given at Ellis Island.ABOVE: Photograph from the New York Public Library Digital Collections dating to the early twentieth century depicting immigrants being registered at Ellis IslandEven today in the twenty-first century, you can still legally change your name to just about anything you want (with a few exceptions). Nonetheless, it is a bit more difficult to do so than it was a century ago because, today, unlike in the late nineteenth century, we have extensive records that can easily be cross-referenced and we tend to assume that a name will always be spelled the same in the records.Thus, unless they are informed otherwise, your bank, the government, and so forth will assume that your name is supposed to be spelled however it is spelled in their records. That means, even today, I could still change the spelling of my name to “Spinsur Aleksandur Mikdanyul” or whatever I like, but I would have to go through a legal process to do so.ABOVE: Photograph from the New York Public Library Digital Collections dating to the early twentieth century depicting new immigrants at the Main Hall of the United States Immigration Station on Ellis IslandThe long and short of it all is that immigration officials at Ellis Island did not Americanize people’s names, either intentionally or unintentionally. Nonetheless, throughout history, immigrants to the United States have frequently made the conscious and voluntary decision to change their names to make them sound less foreign.For instance, my mother’s father’s mother’s father was born in Germany. While he was in Germany, he had what is possibly the most stereotypically German name ever: Wilhelm Heinrich Friedrich Rohrberg. After he came to the United States in 1898, he started going by the name William Henry Frederick Rohrberg (or, actually, more often, William H. F. Rohrberg). In other words, he intentionally Anglicized his name. This was a personal choice on his part—not the result of some clerk at Ellis Island forcibly changing his name.It is also important to note that the spellings of many names have fluctuated significantly over time. For instance, up until around the middle of the nineteenth century, my father’s ancestors spelled the name McDaniel in various ways, which included “McDaniel,” but also “MacDaniel.”ABOVE: Portrait of my mother’s father’s mother’s father Wilhelm Heinrich Friedrich Rohrberg (a.k.a William Henry Frederick Rohrberg). Like many immigrants who came over to the United States in the late nineteenth century, he chose to Anglicize his name.

That sad old story isn’t actually true.Ellis Island immigrants were actually documented before they left Europe; all that was done at Ellis Island regarding names was for an inspector to confirm that the person in front of them was that particular name on the list that had been presented by the ship’s company. The inspectors did not add to the list, nor change any spelling.In addition, the Ellis Island inspectors spoke an average of four languages each - not all the same four - and were very experienced with non-English speakers, so are unlikely to have made gross or careless spelling errors.See more here:Did Ellis Island Officials Really Change the Names of Immigrants?

Wow, you could not come up with a less valid analogy if you tried.Ellis Island was a holding facility, designed to process immigrants before they were allowed into the country. Health was checked, and if anything contagious was suspected, they were kept in quarantine, or sent back home. ID (such as it was back then) was checked. Names were recorded. Immigrants were often required to have people already here to be responsible for them, useful skills and/or a job. Religious and cultural organizations might sponsor people from their homelands to satisfy the first requirement.Many came in. Some were refused. No one was allowed to set foot on the mainland until it was determined they satisfied the requirements for immigration.When Trump talks about immigrants only being processed at specific points of entry, with health checks, favoring immigrants with jobs or job skills, he is talking about *exactly* the kind of approach that Ellis Island existed to facilitate….maximizing the odds that those who moved here would be able to support themselves, assimilate successfully, and contribute to society.Please note, I am not making any kind of political statement for or against any particular policies; I am simply correcting the misunderstanding at the heart of the question.ADDED: “immigrant” is not a synonym for “refugee”. The question asked about the first category, and that is what I have answered.