>>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.
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>That is actually still a problem with people who come from Iran, for example, where they don't use the Latin alphabet. The name has to be transliterated, and I don't think there is a common standard for that.

I'm involved with an organization that does a lot of work with Russian immigrants and the transliterations they've chosen are fascinating. In a lot of places where I would use an "i" or a "y," they have both, such as "Dmitriy."

Tamar