Hey Jews! If you changed your name, from what to what?
We were Tzubulsky --> Sobel
Husband's uncle Epstein --> Ellison
We were Tzubulsky --> Sobel
Husband's uncle Epstein --> Ellison
Comments
He lived in London -- his English was good.
But when he told Ellis Island his name was "Lauber," they changed it to "Lober."
Immigration authorities have always sucked
https://bsky.app/profile/callalily57.bsky.social/post/3lmfkhuutvc2f
But my grandfather and great uncle ended up with different names, and my grandfather had no success trying to get the same surname as his brother.
I can't see that that last bit -- trying to fix it -- wasn't the fault of immigration.
Friend's father was Hoffmann --> Hofman (why???)
Maybe we are related? Of course, we're all related
I don’t think he did it officially and some of the records go back and forth between them for a while
Fun fact: twice in my life people have asked me if the the original spelling was what it is cause they had only seen it in Ukraine (before this we had literally no idea where the fam escaped pogroms from).
It's the only surname change I know of in my family, though!
Definitely not Ellis Island. He was born in Brooklyn.
Incidentally, my wife's gg-grandmother was a Shapiro.
Tzirmann ➡️ Cheerman (my great grandmother)
I'm going to presume Chartoff was changed from something.
My great grandmother went from Chana to Janet
(Yukelson is supposedly a derivation of “Yaakov’s Son,” which could have meant literally “Yaakov’s kid” or “Of the sons of Jacob,” ie, a Jew)
(Incidentally, unless I'm very much mistaken Yukel is diminutive for Yukeb/Yokeb which is the Yiddish descendant of the *German* name Jakob - similar processes created quite a few kinnuyim/traditional nicknames)
His family is—best as we can tell—from the Uman region. But we’ve heard different things from family members: For ages we were told that the family shtetl was Brest-Litovsk,
Just wonderful.
My favorite name in the family tree thus far: Fishel Yukelson. (Not much variation among the women: Mostly Chana and Leah)
And I have a cousin whose paternal line includes a "Simcha Yaakov, called Zimel Yukel" (in contemporary Hasidic Yiddish these are both inherently funny names)