Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Do any of your long ago relatives have interesting names?
I like having some fun when I compile a fact sheet.
Does anyone not remember the Judi Dench TV show 'as time goes by' ?
Below is the "Mrs Bale" I came across.
If you've done genealogy for awhile, you will know that no names were changed at Ellis Island. Passenger manifests were written up at the departure point. A person would give their name, town they were born in, what their destination was, etc. On the ship, passengers had tags with their names on them and when they were getting off the ship, the person at Ellis Island and other ports of entry just checked off the name.
We had some really interesting names in the family...not named after other famous or infamous people but
they are interesting in their own ways. (I won't even go into my husbands side of the family from Poland!)
Temperance Louden
Greenberry Tingle
Flurry Mahoney
Littleton Tingle
Alice Maffenbeier Mehling Auffart(try saying this five times in a row really fast)
Jacque Bouton
Aquilla Corley
Franz Christian Raidt
Friedrich August Karl Heinrich Roth(enough names there?)
John Justinian Snow(GOT?lol)
Last edited by Crazee Cat Lady; 03-07-2023 at 07:57 PM..
I have heard that. But query, how is it that most people don't have an extra-tough Russian name?
They Americanized their names when tney became citizens. You might be able to find your ancestors' citizenship applications on Ancestry or FamilySearch.org. You might find the ship manifest records too, which will show their original names.
Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
9,777 posts, read 15,786,780 times
Reputation: 10886
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbgusa
I have heard that. But query, how is it that most people don't have an extra-tough Russian name?
Those who lived in the Russian Empire had to take last names right around the year 1804 by an edict of the czar. There was no mandate that they be Russian names, and I believe it wasn't common for them to be Russian names as most Jews lived in shtetls and spoke Yiddish. My family who lived what was then part of the Russian empire (now Ukraine) had names such as: Shochet, Rosenbaum, Berenbaum, Strom. Other common names in my grandparents' shtetl were Garber, Rosen, Lederman, Mehlman, etc.
My Shochet ancestors DID change their name once in the US, but I have the ship manifests for all of the ones who came over at various times over the years. All of them say Shochet (various spellings). Then in the first Census, my 2nd great-grandfather suddenly became Rosen as did every other family members. Also, there was no formal paperwork needed at the time (late 1800s to early 1900s) in the US to make a name change. Once in the US anyone could say their name was anything they wanted. Sometimes you do see it in their naturalization papers that they now go by "new name" but there were no paperwork necessary. And getting off at Ellis Island, the inspectors just checked off your name, there was no filing of papers or anything to give anyone a name change.
In the Austro-Hungarian empire, the names had to be "German" names, so their names aren't too different from the non-Jews in that area. My father's family is from there and my maiden name is a German-sounding one and used by both Jews and non-Jews.
Tryphosa.
I had never heard of Tryphosa before, but some distant great aunt was given that name. I thought it might be an Indian name but it comes from the bible.
I spoke with an elderly lady one time, not a family member, whose name was Nineteena because she was the 19th grandchild.
She went by "Teena."
My great-grandmother's middle name was V, the Roman numeral 5 because she was the fifth child.
My mother was named after her, she changed V to Vee, 20th C. schools, employers, govt. wouldn't accept V as a middle name. But V is on her birth certificate.
If you've done genealogy for awhile, you will know that no names were changed at Ellis Island. Passenger manifests were written up at the departure point. A person would give their name, town they were born in, what their destination was, etc. On the ship, passengers had tags with their names on them and when they were getting off the ship, the person at Ellis Island and other ports of entry just checked off the name.
My experience is different, specifically, with immigrants from the former USSR who embarked in countries where their language was not spoken and where the Cyrillic alphabet was foreign. For example at the Port of Southampton, England or Port Hamburg of Germany, their Cyrillic names were spelled out like they sounded in English, German etc.
My grandmother's name надежда in former Soviet state of Ukraine:
- in Latin translation is Nadezhda ( "zh" is not a sound uttered in English lang.)
- at disembarking was written as Nadiezda (z without the h sounds different)
My Shochet ancestors DID change their name once in the US,
A shochet is a person trained and licensed to slaughter animals. From the Hebrew meaning "ritual slaughterer."
Could explain the name change.
Apropos of nothing I once new a man named Arnold A. Arnold. I was afraid to ask what the middle initial stood for.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
