@ericajoy hm I'm struggling with this one, it feels like a "well actually" to a lot of Jewish family's experiences and a waving away of the very real antisemitism at the time.

My family didn't come through Ellis Island specifically, but we do talk about “having" our name changed (Moskovitz -> Moss). The truth is, as the article pointed out, my great-grandparents _chose_ to change their name… but it's complicated to call it a “choice" when it's motivated by fear of discrimination and violence.

@ericajoy A school teacher changed the spelling of an uncle’s last name, yet the rest of the family kept the original spelling. Weird.

My grandfather truncated his, and his children’s last name, from Korenkiewicz to Koren, for reasons known only to him. (Why would change a Polish name in *Chicago*, the city with largest population of ethnic Poles outside of Poland?)