Kirsten Fermaglich - A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America

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A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America

Kirsten Fermaglich

Kirsten Fermaglich

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

www.nyupress.org

2018 by New York University

All rights reserved

References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fermaglich, Kirsten Lise, author.

Title: A Rosenberg by any other name : a history of Jewish name changing in America / Kirsten Fermaglich.

Description: New York : New York University press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN | ISBN 9781479867202 (cl : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH : Names, PersonalJewishUnited StatesHistory.

Classification: LCC CS3010 .F47 2018 | DDC dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012205

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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A Jewish immigrant entered America at Ellis Island. The procedures were confusing to him; he was overwhelmed by the commotion. When one of the officials asked him, What is your name? he replied, Shayn fergessen. (in Yiddish, Ive already forgotten.) The official then recorded his name as Sean Ferguson.

A Treasury of American-Jewish Folklore (1996)

Winona Ryder drinks Manischewitz wine

Then spins a dreidel with Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein

Adam Sandler, The Chanukah Song, Part Two (1999)

When I have told people I was writing a book about Jewish name changing, they have always wanted to tell me a story or joke. (It has frequently been the Sean Ferguson joke in the epigraph.) They have sometimes asked me about the name changes of Jewish celebrities, such as Winona Ryder. Although they have never sung Adam Sandlers Chanukah Song to me, I have sometimes felt as though his novelty piece, filled with references to the unexpected and hidden Jews in popular culture, was playing softly in the background. Some people have asked why I decided to write about name changing, and I have always responded with yet another joke: With a name like Kirsten Fermaglich, how could I not write about name changing?

There is no shortage of humor related to this topic, but, as is always the case, serious meaning lies just below the surface. Images of lonely, confused immigrants such as Sean Ferguson losing their authentic selves or of glamorous celebrities such as Ralph Lauren shedding their past suggest that name changing was an individual experience, one that reflected isolation and disconnection from the Jewish community. Because our culture associates name changing with humor and celebrity, some people may think that the practice was a superficial or insignificant part of American Jewish life. Even my own personal joke about name changing hints at our cultural expectations. With a given name easily mistaken for others and a long, unusual surname that no one can spell, of course I should want to change my name without a second thought or a word to my family. What else is there to say?

In fact, there is a great deal. As I began researching name changing in the United States, I found thousands of name-change petitions housed at the New York City Civil Court, offering compelling personal details and sometimes heartbreaking stories from men, women, and children who sought to abandon their names and find new ones. In 1929, Eli Simonowitz was promoted to assistant manager at his workplace. His employer required him to display a wooden plaque with his name on itand requested [Simonowitz] adopt the shorter name of Simmons. These untold stories and others were buried in the New York City Civil Court records.

I also found, to my surprise, that no historian had yet explored this subjectfor any ethnic groupseriously or in depth. I have come to believe that the casual jokes and the glamorous images we circulate about name changing have discouraged us from truly understanding a practice that has been fundamental to many Americans understandings of themselves, their families, their communities, and their identities. As the first historical book about name changing in the United States, A Rosenberg by Any Other Name recasts our standard images and questions popular assumptions in order to restore these peoples experiences to our understanding of American life.

My research makes clear that, for large numbers of Jews, name changing was neither an isolated nor an individual act. Far from being merely a punch line, name changing was an important and widely-practiced phenomenon among New York Jews in the 20th century. Between 1917 and 1967, thousands of American-born New York Jews submitted name-change petitions as families in order to combat antisemitism, find jobs, and receive an education. In fact, Jewish names are represented in the New York City Civil Court name-change petitions far out of proportion to their numbers in the city, suggesting that legal name changing was a Jewish behavior during this era.

The New York Jews who changed their names represented a minority of the New York Jewish community, but they had a powerful impact on American Jewish communal life. For one thing, their neighbors, friends, and relatives in the city, and indeed all over the country, had to confront the practice and its implications: should they too change their own names? Would a new, less ethnic name improve their lives? Did changing their names mean that they were deserting their religion or their family? For the most part, fears of abandonment were unfounded. Name changers did not typically convert out of the religion, leave the Jewish community, or abandon their families, yet these fears shaped Jews interactions with one another throughout the 20th century.