>Hi,
>
>Just curious, when a family immigrates in the US or Canada or Argentina or whatever country, do they eventually alter the first name and surname. If so, why and how?

It used to be the case that when people came to the US, the immigration offficers would "Americanize" their names. They couldn't spell the names, so wrote down what it sounded like.

Now, it's much more common for people to keep their original names. Sometimes people will make changes if they find their name is hard to use in English, but I think more and more, they keep their family names.

It seems to me also that many immigrants give their children both English names and names in their native tongue.

Incidentally, when I was a teen, our next door neighbors were from the Netherlands. Their surname was Monster.<g>

Tamar