I used to go by "fnu" (for Foggy + NUwe, my nickname on a forum I was a member of) in a corner of the internet I no longer frequent. I never even realised what else it could stand for!
My father had a coworker named Fnu. He was from India and after he was assigned this name by the government, he fully embraced it. He always introduced himself as Fnu.
There is a legendary story of a man who enlisted in the Army, perhaps, with the name RB Jones. Neither R nor B stood for anything else. The Army tried to reflect that by admitting him with the name R(only) B(only) Jones. Naturally, he became known officially as Ronly Bonly Jones! ;-)
Three brothers, named Bu, Chu, and Fu decided to immigrate to the United States from China. They decide to change their names to comply with immigration rules. Bu became known as Buck, Chu became known as Chuck, and Fu... Fu decided to go back to China.
The sign is a subtle joke, the joke is that the place is called "Sneed's Feed & Seed" which is clever in itself and quite funny to those with a mature sense of humour but what's really just hilarious about it is that if you look closely at the front of this store, Sneed's Feed & Seed, you can see a line that reads "Formerly Chuck's". Now, this might go over the average viewer's head as this, THIS, is peak comedy. I doubt anything will ever be as funny as the joke about Sneed's Feed & Seed. Are you ready for this one? So, like I said, the place is called "Sneed's Feed & Seed" and this sign says "Formerly Chuck's", which means that when Chuck owned the place, well, I don't have to tell you...
@@Mate_Antal_Zoltan haha i know this is a copypasta and ive read it so many times but ive just now got it, i thought it was a joke with how chuck doesn't rhyme with feed or seed
The most impactful example of the US changing names was the family of Glenn Seaborg whose parents were assigned Seaborg on arrival from Sweden because their original surname contained characters not in English. Glenn went on to be highly prolific in the world of chemistry and discovered several chemical elements. Eventually, the element seaborgium was named for him and that immigration officer’s decision made it onto the periodic table.
Guessing that his family's name beforehand was "Sjöborg"? The 'ö' doesn't exist in english and would most likely be pronounced 'show-borg'. At least 'Seaborg' preserves the pronunication (kinda-sorta)
So, my great-grandparents on both sides emigrated from Eastern Europe. One family went into Philadelphia and another through Ellis Island. My one side that went through Ellis Island was Steinwurtzel, which was shortened to Stein. The one side that went to Philly was Zionchick. The two brothers went to different tables. One ended up with Zion and the other ended up as Zayon. It split the family up. Zayons ended up in Pittsburgh and Zions ended up in Philly.
An old joke created during the Ellis Island days tells of a recent immigrant from Russia, an Ashkenazi Jew named Aaron Liebowitz, who was exploring his new neighborhood, and saw a sign on a store reading “Aaron Liebowitz Laundry.” Curious as to why a Jew would own a laundry, he walked in and was greeted by a smiling Chinese gentleman. He asked to speak to the owner, and the Chinese gentleman replied, “I’m the owner, Aaron Liebowitz.” The Jewish man replied, “I’m Aaron Liebowitz!” The Chinese man exclaimed, “Oh, I remember! You were in front of me in the line at Ellis Island! You told the guy your name, then it was my turn. When he asked me my name, I told him ‘Sam Ting!’”
Why the F did they just not go with 'N/A' for 'Not Applicable' which would work exactly the same way in all of their forms and databases and also actually explains the situation instead of implying that the person somehow forgot to add their name?
Many German immigrants, who lived in the US while WWII (perhaps WWI, too) changed their names for safety-reasons, because to be a german descendant was definitely not fun. The names were changed to look more american, so they would be a target less.
I remember that was a minor plot point in Back to the Future 3, Marty hopes against hope that the Emmet Brown whose tombstone he found might just be another relative of the Doc's, but Doc confirms that's impossible as his family were the Von Brauwns back then and changed it during World War 1.
A friend of my family's joined the US military some decades ago, when they had a different assumption about name structure. Thereafter he had an official middle name of "Nmi", which stood for "no middle initial". 🙄
many countries have laws that requite everyone to have names. It's not about freedom, it's about having consistent records (original reason why surnames became law in places)
A relative of mine didn't have a middle name when he joined the army, so they assigned him a middle initial. He kept that initial for the rest of his life but never felt the need to come up with a middle name for it to stand for.
My wife has only a middle initial. (Her dad hated his middle names, so he refused to foist them onto his kids.) This has raised some bureaucratic eyebrows, but it’s right there on her American birth certificate, so eventually everyone accepts it.
I would advise persons with only one name to use a patronymic, or their home village, so Kabir ibnMuhammad or Kabir Kabul. Or just make something memorable and pleasing up. Which is how most European last names originated, anyway.
A lot of last names are also derived from the person's occupation, like Bob Sawyer or Mike Taylor. (Presumably, they were Bob the Sawyer or Mike the Tailor until some bureaucrat decreed that henceforth everyone needed to have a last name.)
@@hughmungus1767 I'm not sure about the rest of Europe, but in Germany, surnames/family names became mandatory under Napoleon Bonaparte's administration.
@@dansattah and not everyone took it seriously, which is why one of the more infamous surnames in the Netherlands is "Naaktgeboren" which is literally "born naked" in dutch so you could have someone named Frank Naaktgeboren or Ben Naaktgeboren (which would make you a butt of a joke cause Ben is a homophone with ben, meaning "am", as in "I am" so he would be Ben Naaktgeboren "which if translated literally would be '[I] am born naked')
Occupation, nearby landmark (aka line of sight name), physical characteristic, personality characteristic, town of origin, country of origin, Child of [name of father]...when it comes right down to it, 99% of surnames, especially in the West, really aren't all that creative. My last name indicates that my ancestors lived up the road. Real brain buster coming up with that one, I'm sure.
I had a teacher who had initals as his name and thanks to a misunderstanding on how to fill out a newfanged computer readable form he ended up as Aonly Jonly Lastname on his college records.
I had two Indonesian coworkers a few years back. Neither had last names, but they had problems getting student visas and travel visas to other countries that they would just put in their dad's name as their last name. Oddly enough for one of my coworkers- one of their names was their father's name so essentially it was something like Thomas John John.
That was actually a common naming convention in some places at one time. E.g. Johan Andersson or Anna Svensdotter (Sweden) The "surname" literally means 'son of Anders' or 'daughter of Sven'
another interesting thing is how the US would change russian (and probably other slav) last names as well. you see, in russian last names oftentimes act as adjectives, and adjectives have to correspond with gender, single/plural, case etc. therefore you'd have spouses like Ivanov (male) and Ivanova (female), but that's bureaucratic problem in other countries. so what usually happens in this situation is the whole family gets assigned with "Ivanov" regardless of gender.
@@georgebattrick2365 actually Ivanov and Ivanova are both possessives ("genitive" is not quite correct) of Ivan; family names like that were originally either patronymic or (less commonly) by owner for serf families. Ivanov is the masculine possessive, and Ivanova is the feminine possessive. So yes, it's correct that Ivanova is the feminine version of Ivanov. Some Slavic languages (notably Czech) _do_ have feminine surnames that are based on possessive forms of the male name (e.g. Novak - Novakova), but Russian doesn't actually do that.
One of the funniest examples of this happening that I know of was a man I met who was born to an Icelandic woman who came to America and became a single mother. His last name was something like Peterdottir (Peter's daughter). He was a miserable man.
Ellis Island changed my family's name. In the late 1920s, my grandfather immigrated to the United States from Poland with his parents and siblings via Ellis Island. The family name was Sznajderman, which is on documents I have, including the emigration papers from the Polish government and the ship's official passenger list, where this is very clearly spelled out. It wasn't a case of sloppy handwriting, as several of them were typewritten. The US government workers at Ellis Island changed their last names from Sznajderman to Schneiderman. My grandfather confirmed that this was not a choice made by his family, though one of his brothers later changed his name to Shaw due to anti-German sentiment surrounding World War II.
Nobody's names were changed at or by Ellis Island immigration officials; that is a myth spread by Mario Puzo and weaponized by the Richard Nixon presidential campaign in an attempt to pit working-class Catholics against black people. I assure you that someone in your family made this choice, because names in the US weren't even standardized until the 1930s.
Sznajderman and Schneiderman Sounds like the same to me but in a way people that read in English can pronounce it. You sure it wasn't a case of hearing the name and writing it down wrong in the registry?
I hate to break it to you, but that is a myth. Ellis Island officials had zero legal authority to change people’s names. I have the same stories in my family and after doing enough digging, I generally find that they changed their surnames during the naturalization process.
@@Makarosc *More phonetic English spelling. Technically If you know Polish it's already quite phonetic. So such change wouldn't make it more phonetic itself but make it more phonetic for English speakers. And on that note so is most Polish words, and i wish English would borrow that since spelling is a mess. Seriously diacritics don't bite.
It happens the other way around when people emigrate to countries with non-English naming conventions. In Spain, a country in which traditionally we have two surnames, most web forms always require two surnames, so it is usual to introduce a dot (.) as a second surname for people with one surname or repeat the surname (so, John Smith becomes Jhon Smith Smith). In the last years, many services have been changed to not require a second surname for a foreigner, but any foreigner that goes nationalized without a second surname will still have the same problem.
It happens in Mexico too but with Argentinian immigrants, because said South American country mostly deviates from most of the Hispanic World in not following Spanish Naming Customs. Only until very recently has this been amended, and I had an Argentinian professor in university that constantly had to explain to pretty confused bureaucrats that she had no maternal lastname.
My mom got that extra lastname added to her Spanish passport. We joked that she sounds like a aristocrat now, because double lastnames are associated with posh people.
@@luisreyna2807 what happens is that here in Argentina the second surname is considered optional (technically you're allowed to have a third and even fourth one but it's very rare to find actual cases), with the current law you can even choose the order. It might have to do with the fact that in some cases both surnames are inherited from the father, some families just roll with one combo for multiple generations. So basically it got less structured as time went on, but originally it was probably to accommodate the Italian and German immigrants that did it different from the Spaniards.
I actually had to change the order of my surnames for registering as spanish (I'm descendent) because my mom's last(and only) name is put before my dad's last name. I'm Brazilian and here you can put surnames in whatever order you want, probably similar to Argentina
My dads family name was split into three version. They went to different immigration booths and each worker spelt it wrong or asked for an easier version
7:37 Funny story, My grandmother's original surname is "Shif", Which is the Latin spelling of the Yiddish word for "Ship". While it's not confirmed, My dad suspects that upon arriving at Ellis Island, My ancestors (I don't know specifically how far back) misunderstood when asked for their name, And said the word for Ship, As they just came off a ship, Which then became marked down as their surname.
It's possible that your ancestors may have deliberately anglicised the name to seem more 'American'. You see it with surnames like Schmidt becoming Smith or Goldstein becoming Goldstone.
8:09 Patrick, names were changed all the time, including that of both my great grandmother’s family name (Casolo->Casoli) and great grandfather’s family name (Trevasanute->Trevisani). My and most other Italian Americans have had their family names changed in some way
honestly a system like the UK deed poll where you can just change your legal name by signing a document that you then attach to your passport, drivers license etc. would be a good solution for this. You'd just make a deed poll that you're name isn't Fnu and then you can apply for a job etc. with you real name and as documentation present your Fnu-Visa+the deed poll
It's not just Afghanistan with this problem you note. I fought a sysiphian battle in Iraq trying to get the U.S. official (during the "occupation that we refused to call an occupation") databases to just to use the same data entry convention as the government systems in place used. Namely, given name, father's name, father's father's name, father's father's father's name, tribal affiliation (if used). In practice, locals would "choose" a surname if they were engaging with the big, bad wider world. But, small communities in the boonies? Nope. We'd try to jam that square peg into our round hole, every time. But I can almost forgive the issue with non-European cultures. The system is ignorantly blind to even European naming conventions, such as the extremely mainstream naming in Spain. It is often hard to predict the downstream effects of what name you opt to enter in what field on a form.
Hasn't this always been somewhat true? My ancestors name was spelled Braughton but eventually there was some error along the way & it switched to Broughton because of how it sounded and it has been that way ever since. A lot names got misspelled based off how it sounded.
I feel like I could see this happening in other countries in different ways, such as East Asian nations where the order of names are flipped. Does anyone know of examples of states where documentation doesn't jive with Western European name formats?
Here in Japan this happens a lot. For instance many forms/systems don’t allow for middle names (which can cause havoc with bank accounts or credit cards where the names need to match exactly) . All the more so if you have several middle names. There’s also problems with allowed name length since all native names are usually 2 or 3 characters only.
I was very interested in your subject after reading the title. I am particularly interested in Afghans, for a rather complicated reason that I won't go into. But I thought you were going to touch on the story of my grandfather's life, which is a feature in other persons, real or fictional. My grandfather came to the US as Fong Sui Hong, surnamed Fong. Naturally, immigration assumed Hong was his surname, and he became Mr. Hong. As we Chinese are very family oriented, in became the tiresome duty to explain to every Chinese we met that we were really Fongs, not Hongs. Another of our acquaintance was a Moy Something Toy and thus became Mr. Toy. Fictionally, we also have the scene in the book The Godfather, also in the movie The Godfather Part Two, where a young boy, Vito Andolini from Corleone, became Vito Corleone. The immigration system is still bureaucratic after all these years; it is just bureaucratic in somewhat different ways now, perhaps.
@@st3pp3nw0lf86 they meant that they thought he will talk about names and surnames being switched around. He illustrated it through 2 examples. Arrogance is to assume that the other person is making the mistake.
@@kv4648 my father didn't know his Grandfather's given name was Pasquale until his grandfather died. He knew him as Charlie, Charles being the name given to him at Ellis Island as ' Pasquale ' didn't sound American. These things were common. Roll your eyes back into your head.
When my mother got her Spanish passport she was given a double lastname (paternal and maternal), following Spanish tradition. However, her birth lastname, the one used for all official documents in her county of birth and residence, is her paternal one. So she has two passports for what may look like two different identities, but in reality match to the same person.
I feel like a note saying that you shouldn’t leave either box blank would fix a lot of problems. That way people with only one name can at least choose the other.
But that’s a simple solution that actually makes sense and would likely work. That kind of thinking has no place in a government office. Good day, sir…I said good day!
It wasn't the main topic of the video, but, in passing, you mentioned the concept pf everyone in a family having the same last name. This is the usual case in the English speaking world, but is not necessarily the case elsewhere.
I know there is a history of America changing names to sound more Angolan. My mothers last name was Vickers but her grandfathers before coming here was McVicars. It was changed because apparently it would serve him better off. A friend of mine’s grandfathers name was sabou, but it was changed to Samuel when he came here from Sicily
Re Ellis Island: I have an "American Jewish" last name and I was always told it was because the border officials at Ellis Island couldn't pronounce or write out the original name (and I can indeed verify that there is no consistent way to spell it in the Latin alphabet). If this isn't what happened, I wonder what did, since changing names independently outside of a systemic border official process wouldn't explain why all the "American Jewish last names" end in Berg or Burg!
They probably would have had a -berg/burg surname before immigrating right? Because Yiddish is essentially Judeo-German and -berg is a common particle in German last names. It's one of those reasons why Americans often assume -berg or -stein or -thal surnames indicate jewish ancestry but in Germany there's also lots of people with those type of surnames since Yiddish and German surnames often (but not always) overlap
@@possiblyijt7400 My great-grandparents were Eastern European Yiddish-speaking Jews with a name ending in (when anglicized) skiy. They ended up after immigrating at Ellis Island with a name ending in berg. Sample size of 1 here, but it's pretty safe to say that they didn't all start with such names! Thanks for bringing up thal and stein; I'm not sure why I didn't think of those surname forms as well when I wrote the original comment! I bet they all share a similar mix of stories.
@@Owen-bk5fc Oh that's pretty odd then, especially since -skyi/ski/ski is of slavic origin and berg isn't lol, perhaps it is a bureaucratic error then lol. Also yea it's pretty funny how there's overlap with these things like I once met someone with the surname Rosenthal who insisted that they didn't have jewish ancestry at least that he knew of so his ancestors just happened to pick a surname that a lot of Jewish people decided on as well.
@@possiblyijt7400 Jewish people did not use surnames. so they assumed local surnames when they settled in European nations. I heard -ski is Polish, not Russian as most people think. Just that there were migrations between Russia and Poles in the past.
@@davidjacobs8558 Yeah I'm not jewish so idk but I believe they originally had a system akin to certain other semitic peoples (son of/daughter of). Also I think the -ski ending is just slavic in general (since Polish is also slavic), it's most commonly Polish and many Russians with the surname may have Polish roots but you also see it in places like North Macedonia and Bulgaria I think. It's just spelt differently depending on the romanisation of the language, so generally ski is Polish, sky Russian, skyi Ukrainian and cki is slovak I think.
Two videos in the same day referencing things I learned from Tom Scott (this was in his newsletter a few weeks ago, and JLTG mentioned the amœbæ at Kerosene Creek, NZ from one of his old videos)!
These is the channel that I recommend the most ... where I get strange looks. The next woube Useful Charts. I love this channel and have learned so much
You’d think the government could just make you type out your name on a keyboard or the Roman alphabet. It could still lead to some weird names, but not as weird as Fnu. As a Brits, how do you know so much about the American government? Does the UK do the same thing?
I had an ancestor named Laurus Nilsson in Sweden but became Lauritz Nelson in the USA, I don't know if someone changed it or if he himself did the change.
Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, didn't have a last name, as it was not a widespread custom at the time. So when he entered university and needed a last name, he literally made up the name Linnaeus, from Swedish "lind" (linden tree), after a large tree on the family estate.
Honestly, with all the paperwork that is done already, rather than them assigning you a name, they could give you an opportunity to choose what it is going to be. Ideally there would be someone to talk to about it, but at least a form with suggestions and a warning that if they don’t choose something then Fnu will be assigned by default.
Yeah, they dropped one of my last names (latinos have two last names) so now my passport and my greencard don't match, cuz UCIS wanted to get creative!
I would love a video about what it's like to have a rare last name. As far as I can tell, there are less than 20 in all of Canada and the US with my name surname, and they are all my relatives.
It's a pain is what it is. I grew up with the last name Hesmondhalgh. People misspelled it on forms, on banking information, and to make matters worse my passport didn't match my use names. Changed my last name as soon as I was old enough. It's a little sad to lose a particularly unique name, but I really, really don't miss having to spell and respell and apologise for it every time I need to do anything involving a last name.
My great-grandmother and grandmother had their last names altered when they immigrated. Their names ended in the standard "ova", indicating a female, and that was removed. Sedlacova became Sedlock.
i know somebody with a similar experience. Sarah Lee Smith became Lee-Lee SaSmith [name altered for her privacy but the format is the same]. There was probably some computer error but now she cant get it fixed because all her documentation has her "new" name.
Similar to this issue. My grandparents village in Lebanon didn't have last names until people started immigrating to english speaking countries. When my grandfather immigrated to Australia his last name spelling was changed to match the rest of his family in Australia. While in Lebanon his brothers last name is spelt differently.
I am clicking on this video prolly expecting it to be about spanish names lmao. The anglo saxon world has very different naming conventions from us and can't handle more than one last name yet require a middle one
My dad came here from Italy and his name is Giovanni. His American name is John. He still uses both, but he is widely regarded as John, even to some Italian family members who don't speak English.
Haven't watched the video yet, but no shit. The US costoms has been doing this for centuries. My grandmas name somehow turned from "Jüst" to "Yust". I know that they sound similar(ish) when spoken, but you can not get it wrong when it is on paper.
Reminds me of an old joke. Regarding the Lars Anderson's Chinese Laundry. A young Chinese gentleman entered the USA, he was in line behind a huge Swede. When the Chinese gentleman stepped up to the immigration officer the officer asked what his name was, to which he replied Sam Ting. ....
I know my great-grandparents came from Baden, German Empire had the name of Schäuble. They took the umlaut, the two dots off. In German those dots mean something. They aren't just decoration. Umlauts in German are the difference between already, and beautiful (schon, schön).
I thought this would be about the Americanization of Immigrant last names lol, and I thought "well this is old news", but apparently it's even worse than I thought.... Edit: Ah, it did mention that eventually
When I lived in the US I had many Thai and Burmese Immigrant friends many of them they would would change their names from her actual name in their language to a common English name once they got citizenship. I always thought it was odd Like I have a Karen an ethnic group from Myanmar and Thailand friend who's actual name was Pa Su Da but once she got citizenship she changed her name to Isabella which was really hard for me to call her that because I had known her as Pa su da for so long!
Im pretty sure this americanization of names on Alice Island holds at least some truth. People from Germany with the surname Schmidt would become Smith, Müller would be changed to Muller, Schneider > Snyder and so on
For German Americans, it was more people changing their surnames during the world wars to avoid discrimination I think. A lot of the 'Ellis island' surnames in general are actually just immigrants changing their surnames later on, rather than it being immigrant officer errors, whether it's to 'Americanise' them or make them more easier to pronounce/spell
I had a professor who only had one name when he immigrated, which became his legal last name, and was given the name Fnu. He made very clear that his name was NOT Fnu and to not call him that. Names seem like a thing that should not be messed with, and yet. I'd think there'd be the opportunity to adopt a name if necessary, but seemingly not.
It does account for the Afghan name system though. In Afghanistan they use a single name, and the most significant name in English is the last name, and so their single name is elevated, and the acronym fills the less important name for bureaucratic box-filling purposes. They don't take away names, they just transliterate the syntax.
My last name is an Americanized version of the Croatian last name Suchec. When my great grandfather came to the US the person at the immigration desk wrote it down as Sucec!
Paperwork like IDs and anything really and visa processing is soo beurechratic in the US I have lived in other countries it is soo much faster and less of a hassle. Oh also I hate when I have to fill out forms in the Us and they ask for your ethnicity because I am of English ancestry on my mothers side and I am Egyptian on my dad's side so I never know what to put I always just circle white. The options are always, White, Black, Pacific Islander, Native American, or other.
![[UNCUT] The Loyal Pin ปิ่นภักดิ์ EP.15 (3/4)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IVwR87OH0_A/mqdefault.jpg)
Any Fnus watching this video?
what's your favourite pokemon? mine's snorlax
Machop cause he's like a lil karate kid
@@jamieguadagni9325 Is that because you look like Snorlax?
I used to go by "fnu" (for Foggy + NUwe, my nickname on a forum I was a member of) in a corner of the internet I no longer frequent. I never even realised what else it could stand for!
YES YOU
My father had a coworker named Fnu. He was from India and after he was assigned this name by the government, he fully embraced it. He always introduced himself as Fnu.
Oddly enough, "Fnu" sounds like it could be an Indian name.
@Darrel Jones no it definitely doesn't. About as accurate as saying Mamadou sounds like a European name
@@jamesrt5352 sounds like a plausible European name to me.
@@jamesrt5352 Mamadou sounds like it could be a real French name. Fnu kinda sounds like it could be Indian.
@@jamesrt5352 that must be either a finnish or suomi name. Maybe basque?
There is a legendary story of a man who enlisted in the Army, perhaps, with the name RB Jones. Neither R nor B stood for anything else. The Army tried to reflect that by admitting him with the name R(only) B(only) Jones. Naturally, he became known officially as Ronly Bonly Jones! ;-)
Arby Jones
Take me home
To a place
Where I belong
@@comd4609 Ah, the famous song, "Concrete Roads"! ;-)
West Virginia
Nothing like a bureaucrat’s laziness messing up someone’s life.
*documentation.
And how exactly does this mess up someone's life?
@@anopirsten7565 receiving a name "Fnu" is pretty life-messing I'd say
@@SMiki55 How?
@@anopirsten7565 Would you like being named Fnu? I wouldn't
Three brothers, named Bu, Chu, and Fu decided to immigrate to the United States from China. They decide to change their names to comply with immigration rules. Bu became known as Buck, Chu became known as Chuck, and Fu...
Fu decided to go back to China.
The sign is a subtle joke, the joke is that the place is called "Sneed's Feed & Seed" which is clever in itself and quite funny to those with a mature sense of humour but what's really just hilarious about it is that if you look closely at the front of this store, Sneed's Feed & Seed, you can see a line that reads "Formerly Chuck's". Now, this might go over the average viewer's head as this, THIS, is peak comedy. I doubt anything will ever be as funny as the joke about Sneed's Feed & Seed. Are you ready for this one? So, like I said, the place is called "Sneed's Feed & Seed" and this sign says "Formerly Chuck's", which means that when Chuck owned the place, well, I don't have to tell you...
@@Mate_Antal_Zoltan haha i know this is a copypasta and ive read it so many times but ive just now got it, i thought it was a joke with how chuck doesn't rhyme with feed or seed
Please, PLEASE explain. I felt like something's wrong with me cuz I just don't get it
@@fatimaalaa2659 they added ck to each name, imagine what would happen if they did that to fu
@@growskull sorry, it seems I wasn't clear. I meant the copy pasta about sneed's feed
The most impactful example of the US changing names was the family of Glenn Seaborg whose parents were assigned Seaborg on arrival from Sweden because their original surname contained characters not in English. Glenn went on to be highly prolific in the world of chemistry and discovered several chemical elements. Eventually, the element seaborgium was named for him and that immigration officer’s decision made it onto the periodic table.
This was a choice by the family. Immigration officials didn't change any names.
Guessing that his family's name beforehand was "Sjöborg"? The 'ö' doesn't exist in english and would most likely be pronounced 'show-borg'. At least 'Seaborg' preserves the pronunication (kinda-sorta)
@@SamAronowno it was changed by an immigration official from Sjöborg to Seaborg
@@joelthorstensson2772the swedish word "sjö" (lake) and the english "sea" are etymologically related, so I guess it's kinda right
@@joelthorstensson2772 no, not even close. Don't try to approximate non-english sounds with English spelling, since English sounds are VERY unusual
So, my great-grandparents on both sides emigrated from Eastern Europe. One family went into Philadelphia and another through Ellis Island. My one side that went through Ellis Island was Steinwurtzel, which was shortened to Stein. The one side that went to Philly was Zionchick. The two brothers went to different tables. One ended up with Zion and the other ended up as Zayon. It split the family up. Zayons ended up in Pittsburgh and Zions ended up in Philly.
"Zionchick" sounds really cute 🙃
@@sodinc lady from Zion
@@enzonavarro8550 "small Zion"
An old joke created during the Ellis Island days tells of a recent immigrant from Russia, an Ashkenazi Jew named Aaron Liebowitz, who was exploring his new neighborhood, and saw a sign on a store reading “Aaron Liebowitz Laundry.” Curious as to why a Jew would own a laundry, he walked in and was greeted by a smiling Chinese gentleman. He asked to speak to the owner, and the Chinese gentleman replied, “I’m the owner, Aaron Liebowitz.”
The Jewish man replied, “I’m Aaron Liebowitz!” The Chinese man exclaimed, “Oh, I remember! You were in front of me in the line at Ellis Island! You told the guy your name, then it was my turn. When he asked me my name, I told him ‘Sam Ting!’”
Why the F did they just not go with 'N/A' for 'Not Applicable' which would work exactly the same way in all of their forms and databases and also actually explains the situation instead of implying that the person somehow forgot to add their name?
Don't try to understand, be happy for what it is. 😂 a name change is the least of your problems in the USA.
Many German immigrants, who lived in the US while WWII (perhaps WWI, too) changed their names for safety-reasons, because to be a german descendant was definitely not fun. The names were changed to look more american, so they would be a target less.
oh that must be common back then since 1/7th of us population was of german descant in the 19th century so by ww2 must have been alot more
Like Eisenhower's family (tho unsure when they changed it)
Same for us italians
I remember that was a minor plot point in Back to the Future 3, Marty hopes against hope that the Emmet Brown whose tombstone he found might just be another relative of the Doc's, but Doc confirms that's impossible as his family were the Von Brauwns back then and changed it during World War 1.
@@guybrush20X6
*von Braun
A friend of my family's joined the US military some decades ago, when they had a different assumption about name structure. Thereafter he had an official middle name of "Nmi", which stood for "no middle initial". 🙄
My father had no middle name and he had the same thing happen to him. He was never able to correct it.
Hol' up, did they have a middle name? If so, whoever gave "nmi" must be dumb
Couldn't they just ask the person to make up a middle name on the spot?
@@Seth9809 yeah. Id be up for making on the spot.
I met a Vietnamese man with the middle name Na - for Not Applicable.
Nothing more “freedom” than not being able to have just one name.
many countries have laws that requite everyone to have names. It's not about freedom, it's about having consistent records (original reason why surnames became law in places)
@@vilukisu if anything immigrants should be asked to pick a surname if they don't already have one
It is not really freedom when no one can recognize you for your freedom.
@@sagittariusa7662they are told so not a big deal. Too bad for them…
@@dghost3473 being dehumanised is a big deal.
My wife never put a last name on her passport. She was FNU for 3 years. I had to slowly get everything updated.
This reminds me of various people with the name "Null", and having it wreak havoc on computerized databases.
Vibes of Little Bobby Tables 😀
A relative of mine didn't have a middle name when he joined the army, so they assigned him a middle initial. He kept that initial for the rest of his life but never felt the need to come up with a middle name for it to stand for.
My wife has only a middle initial. (Her dad hated his middle names, so he refused to foist them onto his kids.) This has raised some bureaucratic eyebrows, but it’s right there on her American birth certificate, so eventually everyone accepts it.
I would advise persons with only one name to use a patronymic, or their home village, so Kabir ibnMuhammad or Kabir Kabul. Or just make something memorable and pleasing up.
Which is how most European last names originated, anyway.
A lot of last names are also derived from the person's occupation, like Bob Sawyer or Mike Taylor. (Presumably, they were Bob the Sawyer or Mike the Tailor until some bureaucrat decreed that henceforth everyone needed to have a last name.)
@@hughmungus1767 I'm not sure about the rest of Europe, but in Germany, surnames/family names became mandatory under Napoleon Bonaparte's administration.
@@dansattah and not everyone took it seriously, which is why one of the more infamous surnames in the Netherlands is "Naaktgeboren" which is literally "born naked" in dutch so you could have someone named Frank Naaktgeboren or Ben Naaktgeboren (which would make you a butt of a joke cause Ben is a homophone with ben, meaning "am", as in "I am" so he would be Ben Naaktgeboren "which if translated literally would be '[I] am born naked')
Occupation, nearby landmark (aka line of sight name), physical characteristic, personality characteristic, town of origin, country of origin, Child of [name of father]...when it comes right down to it, 99% of surnames, especially in the West, really aren't all that creative. My last name indicates that my ancestors lived up the road. Real brain buster coming up with that one, I'm sure.
@@TheLPcollector Sounds like a pleasant name, nonetheless; especially near the nude beaches that some of us Germans still defend with our lives.
I had a teacher who had initals as his name and thanks to a misunderstanding on how to fill out a newfanged computer readable form he ended up as Aonly Jonly Lastname on his college records.
I had two Indonesian coworkers a few years back. Neither had last names, but they had problems getting student visas and travel visas to other countries that they would just put in their dad's name as their last name. Oddly enough for one of my coworkers- one of their names was their father's name so essentially it was something like Thomas John John.
@Zaydan Alfariz really that's wild, I met an Indonesian woman with no last name in university. Her surname was a hyphen on the system
That was actually a common naming convention in some places at one time.
E.g. Johan Andersson or Anna Svensdotter (Sweden) The "surname" literally means 'son of Anders' or 'daughter of Sven'
@@hucklebucklin why not just use the name of city or town they were born in as the surname?
another interesting thing is how the US would change russian (and probably other slav) last names as well. you see, in russian last names oftentimes act as adjectives, and adjectives have to correspond with gender, single/plural, case etc. therefore you'd have spouses like Ivanov (male) and Ivanova (female), but that's bureaucratic problem in other countries. so what usually happens in this situation is the whole family gets assigned with "Ivanov" regardless of gender.
Unfortunately Ivanova is not the feminine of Ivanov: it's the genitive, as the wife is the husband's posession.
@@georgebattrick2365 actually Ivanov and Ivanova are both possessives ("genitive" is not quite correct) of Ivan; family names like that were originally either patronymic or (less commonly) by owner for serf families. Ivanov is the masculine possessive, and Ivanova is the feminine possessive.
So yes, it's correct that Ivanova is the feminine version of Ivanov. Some Slavic languages (notably Czech) _do_ have feminine surnames that are based on possessive forms of the male name (e.g. Novak - Novakova), but Russian doesn't actually do that.
One of the funniest examples of this happening that I know of was a man I met who was born to an Icelandic woman who came to America and became a single mother. His last name was something like Peterdottir (Peter's daughter).
He was a miserable man.
Ellis Island changed my family's name. In the late 1920s, my grandfather immigrated to the United States from Poland with his parents and siblings via Ellis Island. The family name was Sznajderman, which is on documents I have, including the emigration papers from the Polish government and the ship's official passenger list, where this is very clearly spelled out. It wasn't a case of sloppy handwriting, as several of them were typewritten. The US government workers at Ellis Island changed their last names from Sznajderman to Schneiderman. My grandfather confirmed that this was not a choice made by his family, though one of his brothers later changed his name to Shaw due to anti-German sentiment surrounding World War II.
Nobody's names were changed at or by Ellis Island immigration officials; that is a myth spread by Mario Puzo and weaponized by the Richard Nixon presidential campaign in an attempt to pit working-class Catholics against black people. I assure you that someone in your family made this choice, because names in the US weren't even standardized until the 1930s.
Sznajderman and Schneiderman
Sounds like the same to me but in a way people that read in English can pronounce it.
You sure it wasn't a case of hearing the name and writing it down wrong in the registry?
I hate to break it to you, but that is a myth. Ellis Island officials had zero legal authority to change people’s names. I have the same stories in my family and after doing enough digging, I generally find that they changed their surnames during the naturalization process.
I guess it's a more phonetic spelling
@@Makarosc *More phonetic English spelling.
Technically If you know Polish it's already quite phonetic. So such change wouldn't make it more phonetic itself but make it more phonetic for English speakers. And on that note so is most Polish words, and i wish English would borrow that since spelling is a mess. Seriously diacritics don't bite.
It happens the other way around when people emigrate to countries with non-English naming conventions. In Spain, a country in which traditionally we have two surnames, most web forms always require two surnames, so it is usual to introduce a dot (.) as a second surname for people with one surname or repeat the surname (so, John Smith becomes Jhon Smith Smith). In the last years, many services have been changed to not require a second surname for a foreigner, but any foreigner that goes nationalized without a second surname will still have the same problem.
It happens in Mexico too but with Argentinian immigrants, because said South American country mostly deviates from most of the Hispanic World in not following Spanish Naming Customs. Only until very recently has this been amended, and I had an Argentinian professor in university that constantly had to explain to pretty confused bureaucrats that she had no maternal lastname.
My mom got that extra lastname added to her Spanish passport. We joked that she sounds like a aristocrat now, because double lastnames are associated with posh people.
@@luisreyna2807 what happens is that here in Argentina the second surname is considered optional (technically you're allowed to have a third and even fourth one but it's very rare to find actual cases), with the current law you can even choose the order. It might have to do with the fact that in some cases both surnames are inherited from the father, some families just roll with one combo for multiple generations.
So basically it got less structured as time went on, but originally it was probably to accommodate the Italian and German immigrants that did it different from the Spaniards.
I actually had to change the order of my surnames for registering as spanish (I'm descendent) because my mom's last(and only) name is put before my dad's last name. I'm Brazilian and here you can put surnames in whatever order you want, probably similar to Argentina
@@enzonavarro8550 yes but just if you want, if you don't note that your name will be registered as name + mothers' surname + fathers' surname
My dads family name was split into three version. They went to different immigration booths and each worker spelt it wrong or asked for an easier version
7:37 Funny story, My grandmother's original surname is "Shif", Which is the Latin spelling of the Yiddish word for "Ship". While it's not confirmed, My dad suspects that upon arriving at Ellis Island, My ancestors (I don't know specifically how far back) misunderstood when asked for their name, And said the word for Ship, As they just came off a ship, Which then became marked down as their surname.
It's possible that your ancestors may have deliberately anglicised the name to seem more 'American'. You see it with surnames like Schmidt becoming Smith or Goldstein becoming Goldstone.
When my ancestors came over from Italy in the early 1900s, their last names got a weird spelling change from Crespi to Crispi.
that's not weird.
Crispi looks like Crispin.
8:09
Patrick, names were changed all the time, including that of both my great grandmother’s family name (Casolo->Casoli) and great grandfather’s family name (Trevasanute->Trevisani). My and most other Italian Americans have had their family names changed in some way
Why did they only change certain letters? That seems redundant to me unless I’m missing something
@@toolio5268 misspelling usually.
@@Hideyoshi1991 what is this? Starbucks?
honestly a system like the UK deed poll where you can just change your legal name by signing a document that you then attach to your passport, drivers license etc. would be a good solution for this. You'd just make a deed poll that you're name isn't Fnu and then you can apply for a job etc. with you real name and as documentation present your Fnu-Visa+the deed poll
I had a great grand father from Estonia, when he moved here they have him the last name Ebrook. No idea what the orginial name was.
Eibruck? Baltic German?
@@robertwilloughby8050 maybe idk
@@robertwilloughby8050 Sounds like it could well have been, but might also have been something more Finno-Estonian with a double vowel in it.
This along with the fact you don't get a say in your birth name is why I think everyone should be entitled to 1 free name change
That would just be a band-aid on the fnu problem, it wouldn't fix it
I think you can try to ask a court to waive the fees
yea i agree, regardless of where you were born, you should get at least one free name change
Yes! Many problems solved in one stroke. Extraordinary common sense! Elect this man now!
That was the case in Sweden, not sure why it was changed, because it makes sense to have.
It's not just Afghanistan with this problem you note. I fought a sysiphian battle in Iraq trying to get the U.S. official (during the "occupation that we refused to call an occupation") databases to just to use the same data entry convention as the government systems in place used. Namely, given name, father's name, father's father's name, father's father's father's name, tribal affiliation (if used). In practice, locals would "choose" a surname if they were engaging with the big, bad wider world. But, small communities in the boonies? Nope. We'd try to jam that square peg into our round hole, every time.
But I can almost forgive the issue with non-European cultures. The system is ignorantly blind to even European naming conventions, such as the extremely mainstream naming in Spain.
It is often hard to predict the downstream effects of what name you opt to enter in what field on a form.
Fnu sounds like something Cthulhu would says
During the time I lived in the US, I constantly had issues with the fact that I have 2 surnames.
Really? I know people in the US sometimes get both father and mother's last names, so I wouldn't think it would be a problem.
@@sandwichqueen I think in that case, the mother's last name technically becomes your middle name.
Why don't the government just call the people who don't have a last name Lnu last name unknown & that will be there last name
They do sometimes.
Pnu Lnu? 😂
"Happy Traveller" is used as the U.S. State's example name. For instance, example Passports use the name "Happy Traveller".
Hasn't this always been somewhat true? My ancestors name was spelled Braughton but eventually there was some error along the way & it switched to Broughton because of how it sounded and it has been that way ever since. A lot names got misspelled based off how it sounded.
I feel like I could see this happening in other countries in different ways, such as East Asian nations where the order of names are flipped. Does anyone know of examples of states where documentation doesn't jive with Western European name formats?
Here in Japan this happens a lot. For instance many forms/systems don’t allow for middle names (which can cause havoc with bank accounts or credit cards where the names need to match exactly) . All the more so if you have several middle names. There’s also problems with allowed name length since all native names are usually 2 or 3 characters only.
You just give yourself a local name to save the headache.
I was very interested in your subject after reading the title. I am particularly interested in Afghans, for a rather complicated reason that I won't go into. But I thought you were going to touch on the story of my grandfather's life, which is a feature in other persons, real or fictional. My grandfather came to the US as Fong Sui Hong, surnamed Fong. Naturally, immigration assumed Hong was his surname, and he became Mr. Hong. As we Chinese are very family oriented, in became the tiresome duty to explain to every Chinese we met that we were really Fongs, not Hongs. Another of our acquaintance was a Moy Something Toy and thus became Mr. Toy. Fictionally, we also have the scene in the book The Godfather, also in the movie The Godfather Part Two, where a young boy, Vito Andolini from Corleone, became Vito Corleone. The immigration system is still bureaucratic after all these years; it is just bureaucratic in somewhat different ways now, perhaps.
The immigration officials are not so much bureaucratic as ignorant, and proud to be ignorant.
Arrogance would be thinking that some TH-camr knows the story of this guy's grandfather. 🙄
@@st3pp3nw0lf86 they meant that they thought he will talk about names and surnames being switched around.
He illustrated it through 2 examples.
Arrogance is to assume that the other person is making the mistake.
@@st3pp3nw0lf86 🙄
@@kv4648 my father didn't know his Grandfather's given name was Pasquale until his grandfather died. He knew him as Charlie, Charles being the name given to him at Ellis Island as ' Pasquale ' didn't sound American.
These things were common.
Roll your eyes back into your head.
When my mother got her Spanish passport she was given a double lastname (paternal and maternal), following Spanish tradition. However, her birth lastname, the one used for all official documents in her county of birth and residence, is her paternal one. So she has two passports for what may look like two different identities, but in reality match to the same person.
I feel like a note saying that you shouldn’t leave either box blank would fix a lot of problems. That way people with only one name can at least choose the other.
But that’s a simple solution that actually makes sense and would likely work. That kind of thinking has no place in a government office. Good day, sir…I said good day!
It wasn't the main topic of the video, but, in passing, you mentioned the concept pf everyone in a family having the same last name. This is the usual case in the English speaking world, but is not necessarily the case elsewhere.
People get branded as FNU all because their names are all one name
I know there is a history of America changing names to sound more Angolan. My mothers last name was Vickers but her grandfathers before coming here was McVicars. It was changed because apparently it would serve him better off. A friend of mine’s grandfathers name was sabou, but it was changed to Samuel when he came here from Sicily
Perhaps you meant to say something other than “sound more Angolan”? It seems like auto-correct may have struck again 😅
🇦🇴MURICA🇦🇴
Just found this video! Haha thanks for using my post and name as a case study!
Re Ellis Island: I have an "American Jewish" last name and I was always told it was because the border officials at Ellis Island couldn't pronounce or write out the original name (and I can indeed verify that there is no consistent way to spell it in the Latin alphabet). If this isn't what happened, I wonder what did, since changing names independently outside of a systemic border official process wouldn't explain why all the "American Jewish last names" end in Berg or Burg!
They probably would have had a -berg/burg surname before immigrating right? Because Yiddish is essentially Judeo-German and -berg is a common particle in German last names. It's one of those reasons why Americans often assume -berg or -stein or -thal surnames indicate jewish ancestry but in Germany there's also lots of people with those type of surnames since Yiddish and German surnames often (but not always) overlap
@@possiblyijt7400 My great-grandparents were Eastern European Yiddish-speaking Jews with a name ending in (when anglicized) skiy. They ended up after immigrating at Ellis Island with a name ending in berg. Sample size of 1 here, but it's pretty safe to say that they didn't all start with such names!
Thanks for bringing up thal and stein; I'm not sure why I didn't think of those surname forms as well when I wrote the original comment! I bet they all share a similar mix of stories.
@@Owen-bk5fc Oh that's pretty odd then, especially since -skyi/ski/ski is of slavic origin and berg isn't lol, perhaps it is a bureaucratic error then lol. Also yea it's pretty funny how there's overlap with these things like I once met someone with the surname Rosenthal who insisted that they didn't have jewish ancestry at least that he knew of so his ancestors just happened to pick a surname that a lot of Jewish people decided on as well.
@@possiblyijt7400 Jewish people did not use surnames. so they assumed local surnames when they settled in European nations.
I heard -ski is Polish, not Russian as most people think. Just that there were migrations between Russia and Poles in the past.
@@davidjacobs8558 Yeah I'm not jewish so idk but I believe they originally had a system akin to certain other semitic peoples (son of/daughter of). Also I think the -ski ending is just slavic in general (since Polish is also slavic), it's most commonly Polish and many Russians with the surname may have Polish roots but you also see it in places like North Macedonia and Bulgaria I think. It's just spelt differently depending on the romanisation of the language, so generally ski is Polish, sky Russian, skyi Ukrainian and cki is slovak I think.
Two videos in the same day referencing things I learned from Tom Scott (this was in his newsletter a few weeks ago, and JLTG mentioned the amœbæ at Kerosene Creek, NZ from one of his old videos)!
These is the channel that I recommend the most ... where I get strange looks. The next woube Useful Charts. I love this channel and have learned so much
Not related but ever since one of my elementary teachers decided that my second last name was a middle name, I've just been going with it.
The name "assigned" is based on the documentation from the foreign government based on the passport. Look at the scannable lettering.
You’d think the government could just make you type out your name on a keyboard or the Roman alphabet. It could still lead to some weird names, but not as weird as Fnu.
As a Brits, how do you know so much about the American government? Does the UK do the same thing?
that's what it does...
Ill defo change my name once i permanently move to some english speaking place. I wouldnt wanna bother tryna explain the spelling to ppl all the time
I had an ancestor named Laurus Nilsson in Sweden but became Lauritz Nelson in the USA, I don't know if someone changed it or if he himself did the change.
The name Fnu is undeservingly hilarious.
I use FNU/Linux
If I didn't have a Last Name, I would put the name of the town I'm from. Just like the ancients did.
Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, didn't have a last name, as it was not a widespread custom at the time. So when he entered university and needed a last name, he literally made up the name Linnaeus, from Swedish "lind" (linden tree), after a large tree on the family estate.
would be nice if someone just talked to the person to figure out how they want to handle it, instead of picking something likely unwanted for them
Thank you for giving me a good idea USA.
This would be a perfect system for the dream country I want to build.
a whole fnu world?
Honestly, with all the paperwork that is done already, rather than them assigning you a name, they could give you an opportunity to choose what it is going to be. Ideally there would be someone to talk to about it, but at least a form with suggestions and a warning that if they don’t choose something then Fnu will be assigned by default.
Yeah, they dropped one of my last names (latinos have two last names) so now my passport and my greencard don't match, cuz UCIS wanted to get creative!
I would love a video about what it's like to have a rare last name. As far as I can tell, there are less than 20 in all of Canada and the US with my name surname, and they are all my relatives.
It's a pain is what it is. I grew up with the last name Hesmondhalgh. People misspelled it on forms, on banking information, and to make matters worse my passport didn't match my use names. Changed my last name as soon as I was old enough. It's a little sad to lose a particularly unique name, but I really, really don't miss having to spell and respell and apologise for it every time I need to do anything involving a last name.
My great-grandmother and grandmother had their last names altered when they immigrated. Their names ended in the standard "ova", indicating a female, and that was removed. Sedlacova became Sedlock.
I do not get the logic of shifting it to the last name section.
this is a historical example but one of my great-grandparents' last name was legally Goodbeer b/c of stuff like this (it was actually Gutiber)
My school has a massive Afghan population due to many of them immigrating here after the Taliban takeover and many of them has that dreaded last name.
I’m American. My legal name is Mohamed Mohamed
lol
No "ibn" or "al-"?
@@alexandrub8786 not everyone named Muhammad is Arab, and not every Arab has those components in their name
When you naturalize after immigration, you can freely choose a new name on the n-400 before taking the oath. At no extra cost.
Another great video
They should at least get the option to choose their new name
i know somebody with a similar experience. Sarah Lee Smith became Lee-Lee SaSmith [name altered for her privacy but the format is the same]. There was probably some computer error but now she cant get it fixed because all her documentation has her "new" name.
Certainly you can change names...?
@@Liggliluff In the *USA,* changing the legal name is bloody expensive.
great video!
What? it just came out, how have you watched it all and called it great?
You should check out some cases like that in Spanish speaking nations, a lot of immigrants there have changed names as well.
Similar to this issue. My grandparents village in Lebanon didn't have last names until people started immigrating to english speaking countries. When my grandfather immigrated to Australia his last name spelling was changed to match the rest of his family in Australia. While in Lebanon his brothers last name is spelt differently.
I am clicking on this video prolly expecting it to be about spanish names lmao. The anglo saxon world has very different naming conventions from us and can't handle more than one last name yet require a middle one
My dad came here from Italy and his name is Giovanni. His American name is John. He still uses both, but he is widely regarded as John, even to some Italian family members who don't speak English.
Man my family came to America and they shortened the name to Werst and now I have to reap the repercussions of that.
Haven't watched the video yet, but no shit. The US costoms has been doing this for centuries. My grandmas name somehow turned from "Jüst" to "Yust". I know that they sound similar(ish) when spoken, but you can not get it wrong when it is on paper.
Governments shouldn't change peoples names just prevent the disturbing ones.
Reminds me of an old joke. Regarding the Lars Anderson's Chinese Laundry. A young Chinese gentleman entered the USA, he was in line behind a huge Swede. When the Chinese gentleman stepped up to the immigration officer the officer asked what his name was, to which he replied Sam Ting. ....
Someone else told the sam ting in another comment, but with another name and nationality for what name was copied. It's certainly an old joke.
@@Liggliluff It is old, It is also now considered RACIST, I am told.
I had someone who was given Fnu in my sophomore year math class and he would also just address himself as that.
That should be "immigrants' [with the apostrophe after the S] names".
He probably studied in England. That level of detail is not taught in school there.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future a FNU becomes a sports superstar people name their kids Fnu
My family name was changed from its Swedish roots when my grate grate grandfather immigrated to the USA from Ireland.
Glenn Seaborg.
His name was changed when he arrived.
sjöbergium!
@@notwithouttext SEABORGIUM! :V
@@spaghettiisyummy.3623 yes
@@notwithouttext :D
I was wondering about that... There is a Fnu who drives an Uber here.
I know my great-grandparents came from Baden, German Empire had the name of Schäuble. They took the umlaut, the two dots off. In German those dots mean something. They aren't just decoration. Umlauts in German are the difference between already, and beautiful (schon, schön).
I had to go check the date of this video to make sure it wasn't an April Fool's. I had no idea of this crazy name situation in the USA!
My great great grandfather's last name was Weise. The immigration people changed it to Wise, as Weise sounded too German.
I thought this would be about the Americanization of Immigrant last names lol, and I thought "well this is old news", but apparently it's even worse than I thought....
Edit: Ah, it did mention that eventually
When I lived in the US I had many Thai and Burmese Immigrant friends many of them they would would change their names from her actual name in their language to a common English name once they got citizenship. I always thought it was odd Like I have a Karen an ethnic group from Myanmar and Thailand friend who's actual name was Pa Su Da but once she got citizenship she changed her name to Isabella which was really hard for me to call her that because I had known her as Pa su da for so long!
My great grand father had his last named changed at Ellis island, from appelt to appeld
Im pretty sure this americanization of names on Alice Island holds at least some truth. People from Germany with the surname Schmidt would become Smith, Müller would be changed to Muller, Schneider > Snyder and so on
My friends, who had been Müller, had their handwritten form typed up as Miiller, 2 i, because the immigration person had never seen an umlaut.
For German Americans, it was more people changing their surnames during the world wars to avoid discrimination I think. A lot of the 'Ellis island' surnames in general are actually just immigrants changing their surnames later on, rather than it being immigrant officer errors, whether it's to 'Americanise' them or make them more easier to pronounce/spell
I had a professor who only had one name when he immigrated, which became his legal last name, and was given the name Fnu. He made very clear that his name was NOT Fnu and to not call him that. Names seem like a thing that should not be messed with, and yet. I'd think there'd be the opportunity to adopt a name if necessary, but seemingly not.
So can I give myself a new name by immigrating to the US?
It does account for the Afghan name system though. In Afghanistan they use a single name, and the most significant name in English is the last name, and so their single name is elevated, and the acronym fills the less important name for bureaucratic box-filling purposes. They don't take away names, they just transliterate the syntax.
forcibly giving someone a bureaucratic acronym as a legal name is not accommodating other cultures.
This is dumb. If someone leaves the last name blank then it should be Lnu.
How ridiculous that a process that could be mostly automated--having your name changed legally--is so expensive!
My last name is an Americanized version of the Croatian last name Suchec. When my great grandfather came to the US the person at the immigration desk wrote it down as Sucec!
The croatian spelling is probably Sučec (pronounced Suchec) so the guy probably just removed the diacritics.
I like how in The American Tail they change names of recently immigrated mice
Lol you make it seems like if they put something in the box it’ll get changed when it’s not the case at all lol
when my family immigrated to the us, they had to change their name because the typewriter didn't have the o with 2 dots above it
can't you replace ö with oe?
Commenting for the algorithm!
Responding for the algorithm!
Paperwork like IDs and anything really and visa processing is soo beurechratic in the US I have lived in other countries it is soo much faster and less of a hassle. Oh also I hate when I have to fill out forms in the Us and they ask for your ethnicity because I am of English ancestry on my mothers side and I am Egyptian on my dad's side so I never know what to put I always just circle white. The options are always, White, Black, Pacific Islander, Native American, or other.
Beautiful video ☺👍