Making a name for yourself

Regarding “Last names changed at Ellis Island but Jews gained a safe haven” (September 19), my mother was born Chia Gittel Pinyan in Latvia, but discovered on her first day in New York that she was now Ida Gertrude Pinyan. She assumed the change had been made at Ellis Island, but, in researching my parents’ stories, I discovered my mother was listed as Ida Gertrude Pinyan with her parents Isaac and Malka Pinyan on the ship’s manifest of the RMS Baltic when they left Liverpool for New York.

Ironically, my official name in Israel was changed by an officious Interior Ministry clerk when I made aliyah. The clerk claimed Isabel was the same name as the biblical Jezebel or the Spanish queen who banished the Jews from Spain during the Inquisition. He said neither woman was a suitable image for a young woman in Jerusalem and asked if I had another name. When I responded that my middle name was Natalie, he entered “Natalie” on my official ID, thus creating various problems for me in later years.

The image of Ellis Island clerks carelessly changing immigrants’ names was reinforced in a famous joke told in a Catskill Mountains resort similar to the one in the film Dirty Dancing: “A Jewish immigrant who came from Russia arrived at Ellis Island in New York. He was overwhelmed by the commotion and confusing procedures. When one of the officials asked him a second time “What is your name?” he replied, “Shoyn fergessen?” (in Yiddish, “You’ve already forgotten?”) The official then recorded the man’s name as Sean Ferguson.

Some entertainers changed their names because they believed less ethnic names would appeal to wider audiences, often on the advice – or orders – of their Hollywood bosses. Would movie audiences have loved Archibald Leach as much as they loved Cary Grant, Bernard Schwartz instead of Tony Curtis, Issur Danielovitch (later Kirk Douglas) and Frances Ethel Gumm (Judy Garland)? With the exception of Grant, who was born in England, all the others were born in America and never passed through Ellis Island.

In an odd turnaround, many current performers have chosen to keep names that are difficult to pronounce, e.g. Saorise Ronan, Shia LaBeouff, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong’o, Awkwafina (although her real name is actually Nora Lum).

And then there’s Arnold Dorsey, who for some reason chose to perform under the mouthful of a name “Englebert Humperdinck...”

DR. ISABEL (NATALIE) BERMAN

Ra’anana