Yeah, it's what you've heard, but think about it. If you don't want to change your name, would you change it because someone at Ellis Island says you should? Or would you just go along and use your own name once you're off the island? Do you really think that many people came through, had their names changed at Ellis, and didn't protest? More than a few would ask "write that down for me, so I remember it?" but not a note of this has turned up. You could give me a new name in Chinese, but if you said it to me once or twice in the course of a conversation that only took a couple of minutes I would not only not be able to remember it, if you wrote it down for me, I couldn't read it. That was much the case for individuals immigrating to the U.S.

I realize this is an uphill battle towards dawning comprehension that just because this is a popular story it doesn't make the thing true. It's an American myth, name changes at Ellis, but this goes up there right along with the stuff immigrants believed about the U.S. before they got here--the streets paved with gold and the vast American cornucopia. Not only were the streets not paved with gold, they often were bare dirt and immigrants paved them! That cornucopia required back-breaking work in fields owned by other people. How does one go about getting a job paving streets, building railroads, in agriculture, in mines, in packing houses, etc? If your name is similar to the person who does the hiring (an Irish surname if it's an Irish foreman, etc.) OR if your name is short enough or Anglicized so it's easier to remember, then your chances of employment are greater. You want to get a job as a domestic worker in an American household? Do you think the mistress of the house is going to call you by a long complicated name if she doesn't speak your language? Then shorten your name. These are just a few possible scenarios from the workplace that make the rounds in the scholarship associated with immigration interpretation at parks and museums.

Robomatic illustrated my point by presenting a couple of examples of the jokes that are out there. (I saw that Simpsons also--great show!) The man who is the waiter would have in actuality handed over paperwork and that would have been compared to the manifest, he wouldn't verbally give his name (assuming any Chinese WERE processed at Ellis, which was highly unlikely, because the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and it's indefinite extension in 1904 kept out all Chinese immigrants for most of Ellis' history--they were only at Ellis if they were being deported after coming in illegally through Canada). One joke that got frequent requests is the Rockefeller/Sean Ferguson one. One of our Yiddish speaking rangers told that one particularly well, and when Hadassah groups came out for tours he'd invariably have someone ask if he was married because she had a daughter. . .

SRS