SLAYTON Immigrants grapple with identity

spring felt the same way, that the name was an impediment to getting a job as a hospital intern.

This was common, according to Kristen Fermaglich, who began a 2015 article in the Journal of American Ethnic History with the anecdote. “Name changing in New York City became a popular activity,” particularly among the aspirational classes, between World War I and World War II, she wrote.

Some of this had already happened on Ellis Island, as clerks with little in the way of language skills — or sympathy — wrote down what they thought they heard. My mother, for example, was Sarah from her birth in Lithuania. But the immigration officer couldn’t understand my grandmother, and the 8-year-old became Sylvia for life. (In another name twist, lacking a middle name she chose an initial for herself, “J,” after her favorite character from literature, Jo March in “Little Women.”)

Others were more deliberate with their choices. Giovanni Palmieri became John Palmer, Giuseppe Molinaro transformed to Jim Miller, and Vincenzo Di Giorgio kept a whiff of his native Italian with James Digeorge.

Many did not go through the expense of a court hearing. They just began signing their name a different way, and it stuck. Among Polish people, for example, Bialoblonski became Baker and Liszewski got known as Leonard.

The point is an eternal one. Every immigrant cohort has struggled with the same question: whether to fit in or maintain an ethnic identity instead. Deciding which name to present to the world is always a fundamental part of this process.

Liu, the journalist, can take joy from knowing that her dilemmas — and solutions — are not new, but in fact the latest entrants in a very traditional struggle. She is part of America.