Hi Peter,

In the US this happened a lot in the days when Ellis Island was still the gateway for most immigrants (late 19th to early 20th), when this country still welcomed immigrants. The changes were due to the arrogance of the immigration officers on one hand, who refused to make an effort to pronounce or even spell the names of the newcomers correctly in their documentation, and on the other, to the newcomers' inability to communicate properly with the immigration officers.

In any case, I don't see why someone would change their name or lastname upon immigrating somewhere. Was this the practice at some point in the Netherlands?

Alex


>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?
>
>I'm asking this, because here in the Netherlands this is currently not the practice. The result is that a lot of immigrants have names that 'we' can hardly or not at all pronounce. A solution I see is that people alter their original name when they immigrate.