Why You Should Mind Your Ps and Qs

Jose Iuerdo's years in prison allowed him to move up in the world—or at least in the phone book.

In leaving prison the last time, he lost his birth name. What happened — and he swears this is true — he was imprisoned so long, the Department of Motor Vehicles "expunged" his name.

And his birth certificate was somewhere in Colorado. When he applied for a new identification card, someone interpreted the typed "Q" as an "I" and that's why he's now Iuerdo and not Querdo.

That's OK with him. He's happier with the new Jose than the old Jose. [Link]

She Saw Nothing Wrong With Tobacco Juice

Brian Tingley's entry in TierneyLab's Best Weird-Name Story Contest:

The Gazette was a bi-weekly publication of the Government of the Province of Saskatchewan in Canada. It contained the official notification of new legislation pending, laws passed, hearings scheduled, and so on. What made it most interesting was the list of proposed name changes. If you planned to change your name, the old and new names had to be published in the Gazette.

So there it was that I saw Thelma Jean Tobacco Juice had applied to change her name. The poor woman. How she must have been the subject of ridicule through her growing up years. But she seemed to have missed the point. Her new name… Mary Elizabeth Tobacco Juice.

Sean From the Shtetl

Schelly at Tracing the Tribe writes today about the old "They changed our name at Ellis Island" myth. The linked article tells the apocryphal story of a Jewish immigrant who ending up with the name "Sean Fergusson."

“It’s like this,” the second Jew said. “My name was Moshke Rabinowitz. The first time I arrived at Ellis Island, I failed the eye test, so the doctors sent me back to Europe. There my eyes were treated and cured, and I decided to try again. But what would happen, I thought, if I turned up a second time as the same Moshke Rabinowitz? They’d already know me and send me back again. And so I decided to call myself Yankl Katzenstein. Still, what if someone recognized me? And so there I was, standing in line at Ellis Island and getting more and more nervous all the time, and when it’s finally my turn I’m so flustered that I can’t remember my new name. The immigration official asks me what it is, and I can’t think of it; it’s simply escaped me. ‘Oy, kh’hob shoyn fargesn!’ I say. ‘Sean Fergusson?’ the official repeats, and writes it down on the form.”

In Yiddish, of course, kh’hob shoyn fargesn means “I’ve forgotten.” [Link]

First Fox Was a Fuchs

Vicente Fox's grandfather pursued the American Dream all the way to Mexico.

Fox's family name is actually Fuchs, a German name that was changed to Fox at some point. His grandfather, Joseph Louis Fox, was born in Cincinnati in 1865, attended Woodward High School and moved to Mexico at age 32. His son, Jose Luis Fox, married Mercedes Quesada and had nine children, including Vicente Fox Quesada, who served as president from 2000 to 2006. [Link]

It's Henry!

Jane Walsh of the archives committee in Gloucester, Mass., did a search of the Web in 2004 to figure out why a 19th-century painter changed his name from Nathaniel Rogers Lane to Fitz Hugh Lane.

Up popped Lane’s request to change his name to Fitz Henry Lane. Walsh and her committee comrades figured “Henry” must be a mistake, a typo maybe. Still, it was an error they came across with some frequency in Lane records. And so they visited the state archives in Boston to look at Lane’s actual petition.

“And sure enough, there it was: Nathaniel Rogers Lane writing in to ask if he could have his name changed to Fitz Henry Lane,” says co-chair Sarah Dunlap. They realized that Lane had always been Fitz Henry. Fitz Hugh was the error. [Link]

An article from last year gave a more vivid account of the discovery.

In Lane's own handwriting was a request to change his name to Fitz Henry Lane.

"It's Henry!" Dunlap recalls shouting in the archives room. [Link]

When news of the discovery spread, museums across the country had to relabel their Lane paintings. Some labels were not so easily changed.

Sikh and Ye Shall Find Two Surnames

A Sikh group in Canada is upset over a policy that requires immigrants with the surname Singh or Kaur to change their names.

Karen Shadd-Evelyn, a spokeswoman with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said the reason for the policy is that it helps officials with the paperwork and allows them to identify people's files quickly, efficiently and accurately.

"You can imagine you wouldn't want your file to be confused with someone else's," she said.

Singh and Kaur are common names in the Sikh community. In a tradition that began more than 300 years ago, the name Singh is given to every baptized male and Kaur to every baptized female Sikh. There are millions of Singhs and Kaurs around the world. [Link]

During the Sikh naming ceremony, the holy book—Guru Granth Sahib—is opened to a random page. The given name of the child is left to the parents, but must start with the first letter of the first word on that page.

In older days parents were not very fussy about choosing the name. We often hear such names [as] Vir Singh, Jodh Singh, Lal Singh, Kala Singh, Teja Singh and Ganda Singh. Literally translated some of these would mean red, black, sharp and onion. [Link]

Hell Is Their Heritage

A little boy named Max Hell was refused admission to a Catholic school in Melbourne, Australia, because of his Austrian surname.

Alex Hell said his eldest son, Max, 5, was refused entry to St Peter Apostle Primary School in Hoppers Crossing last month after he reneged on a deal with the principal to change Max's surname to Wembridge, his mother's maiden name.

[W]hen it came to ditching the family name, Mr Hell had a change of heart. "I couldn't do it because that's our name, our heritage, it's who we are." [Link]

Half Were Hangers-On

A DNA study of 100 men named Robson in Northern England proved that only half could claim descent from a common ancestor.

The study revealed 50 volunteers who gave DNA samples could be tracked back to a single male 2000 years ago.

But others could be descended from hangers-on who latched themselves to the powerful Border Reiver family and changed their names as a form of subservience. [Link]

The Hasbins Have Been Hasbeens

In the course of collecting material for a book on the Dunbar community in Georgetown County, South Carolina, Joyce Cox-Holmes learned from John Hasbin the origin of his unusual surname.

He told Holmes that his family came from a plantation near Greenfield owned by a man named Hazard or Hazzard. The slave people rented from Hazzard. When they were freed, they changed from Hazard to Hasbeen. That’s now become Hasbin. The name developed because these people “has been a slave no longer.” Holmes said, “It’s a change, a make-up name.” [Link]

President Calls for End of '-ov' Endings

Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov has officially changed his surname to "Rakhmon," according to the country's Foreign Ministry.

In efforts to return to Persian roots, the president also appealed to new Tajik parents to follow suit and register new-born babies under Persian surnames and drop Russian-style endings like "-ov" and "-ev."

During the Soviet era, most Tajik residents added Slavic endings to their Persian-style surnames. [Link]

A Rose by Any Other Name Would Be Easier to Spell

Dr. Leonard Garry, wife Linda, and their kids have reclaimed the family's original Italian surname: Giarraputo. Leonard's father had changed the name to avoid discrimination in the insurance business.

Three months of paperwork and a couple of trips to Motor Vehicles later, the Garrys officially became the Giarraputos in October. The doctor's patients were fine with the change, but, just in case, he still answers to Dr. Garry or just "Dr. G."

Giarraputo's daughter Brianna Rose, 9, was thrilled the name translated to "wild rose," while the youngest, 6-year-old Megan, still is grappling with the spelling. [Link]

Certified Public Awkward Moment

Illinois has passed a law requiring candidates who change their names in the three years prior to an election to include a "formerly known as" line on the ballot. This should stop office-seekers from changing their surnames to appeal to ethnic groups, or from doing something really moronic, like what Sen. Christopher Lauzen did when he ran for state comptroller in 1998.

When election officials wouldn't allow him to note that he was a certified public accountant on the ballot, Sen. Lauzen attempted to have his last name legally changed to "CPA," but a judge refused to allow the name change.

"I received bad advice -- it was a mistake. I was trying to use my point-of-sale marketing skills and let voters know I'm a CPA. I worked hard to become an accountant. I tried to use that to my advantage," a rather embarrassed Sen. Lauzen said this week. [Link]

The Perpetrator Shall Remain Nameless

This comes from an interesting little book on Boston called Curiosities of History:

In 1640, in the case of Josias Plaistow for stealing four baskets of corn from the Indians, he was ordered to return eight baskets, "to be fined £5, and to be called Josias, and not Josias Plaistow, as he formerly used to be." [p. 50]

He Has a Little Tyme on His Hands

Justin Tyme of Indiana County, Pennsylvania, had a daughter recently. Her name is Summer Tyme.

Tyme, 52, was well aware his name was a play on words before his daughter's birth - he legally changed his name when he turned 21 as a "rite of passage," he told the Indiana Gazette.

"I was at a party in Florida and someone said, 'Ah, you're just in time,' and it stuck," Tyme said. He did not say what his birth name was. [Link]

There's No Escaping This Myth

This dubious passage from The Secret Life Of Houdini by William Kalush and Larry Sloman tells of Harry's family arriving in New York in 1878. The family's name in Hungary was "Weisz."

They arrived in New York on July 3 and were processed at the Castle Garden immigration building, where each of them received a new name. Since Cecilia didn't speak English, her responses to the officials were in German. So their names became English variants of German names. Armin became Herman, eight-year-old Natan just had an "h" added, six-year-old Gottfried Vilmos was dubbed William, Erik turned into Ehrich, and Ferencz Dezso was officially named Theo -- later to be nicknamed Dash -- and the family name became Weiss. [Link]

Ehrich must have made a return trip to Castle Garden to have his name changed to "Harry Houdini." Here's a good explanation of why stories like these are bogus.

Does He Know He's Adopted?

People ask the strangest questions in the Genealogy category at Yahoo! Answers.

The Perfect Son-in-Law

Dan and Patty MacInnis were hoping for a son to carry on the family's Scottish surname, but had three daughters. Luckily, one of those daughters found an amenable fiancé in Gary Fletcher.

Seems that about six weeks before their wedding, Heather asked Gary to consider changing his name. First he was very quiet, she said, but "he let me know he'd think about it."

After much thought and realizing his brothers could carry on his surname, Gary agreed to legally change his last name to MacInnis. [Link]

Steve Finds an Actual Factual Error

A Canadian columnist offers these examples of people having their names changed by immigration officers. Too bad they're fictional.

A Chinese gentleman whose name is Jacob Rosenberg explained how he came by this name. “When I entered the country, the immigration officer asked me my name. I said Saim Ting. So he wrote down the name of the Jewish man who was in line ahead of me.”

An elderly Jewish gentleman when asked for his name at immigration had a senior moment and replied, “Shoin fargessen (can’t remember).” So that’s how he got his name — Shaun Ferguson! [Link]

This last example reminds me of a recent post by Steve Danko, in which he examined the marriage record of Joseph Koscinczyk.

What’s so interesting about this record? Well, Joseph’s mother’s maiden name is listed as “Niewiem”, which is not a Polish surname at all. “Nie wiem” is a Polish sentence that means “I don’t know”.

It appears that, when asked for his mother’s maiden name, Joseph answered in Polish, ”Nie wiem”, and the clerk dutifully recorded that response in the register.

They're Making a Federal Case Out of It

Diana Bijon could have taken husband Mike Buday's last name by simply writing it on their marriage license application.

But if Buday wanted to become a Bijon, he would have to get an order of the court to do so — and not before he had filed a petition, paid $320, advertised public notice of his intention to change his name for four weeks in a local newspaper and then appeared before a judge.

"It strikes both of us — especially me — that this is not on equal ground," said Buday, now married to Bijon for more than a year but reduced to still using his, well, maiden name. "This is about gender equality." [Link]

The couple's case has been taken up by the ACLU, which will argue that the additional costs and delay violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. I'm no lawyer, but I'm almost certain this is why the 14th Amendment was adopted.

A Blue-Collar Blue Blood

The New York Sun tells the interesting story of an enigmatic genealogist and art collector named William M. V. Kingsland, who died last March. No one knew of his origins until two other genealogists, Leslie Corn and Roger Joslyn, took on the case. They found that he was a native New Yorker born Melvin Kohn.

In a motion filed in 1960 to change his name, Kingsland's parents said of their 17-year-old son: "in order to more successfully pursue his career in the field of literature and languages, which are his chief interests, it would be to his benefit to assume the name of William M. Kingsland, as this name has a more literary sounding and flavor."

The family was then living at 1420 Grand Concourse in the Bronx. Reached by phone, the attorney who made the motion for Kingsland's name change, Zoltan Neumark, recalled a quiet young man who "had an idea he wanted an aristocratic name." Kingsland would later tell close friends his middle initials stood for "Milliken" and "Vanderbilt." [Link]