O'Kun

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 07/26/2002 3:21:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
einstein at FROGNET.NET writes:

> When my brother was in the USAF he says he met an Iranian immigrant with the
>  unlikely name of O'Brien who had entered the US with an ethnic name but
that
>  it had been changed in Boston (where he landed); may be apocryphal...

You appear to be unfamiliar with the legends of what Ellis Island clerks did
to European surnames.  (According to one source, it was not the clerks at
Ellis Island, which hired polyglots to examine the immigrants, but rather the
fault of ticket clerks etc. on the various shipping lines on which the
immigrants arrived.)

Two very real examples:

My wife's grandparents were from Lithuania with the surname Krevyanski (I
don't know the spelling.)  They exited Ellis Island with the Swedish surname
of Krohn.  (It means "crown" in Swedish and I understand was given to Swedes
who received crown land on which to start farms, or some such.)

A friend has the unlikely surname "McCrensky".  It was something like
"Makrenski" in the old country.

Not Ellis Island, because according to what my maternal grandmother (born
1881) told me it occurred is England:  Her surname was spelled "Wineburgh", a
spelling I have never seen elsewhere as a surname.  The story goes that her
grandfather arrived in England from Germany as a result of the Revolution of
1848 (presumably he was involved with the losing side).  Once in England he
was told "That's not how you spell 'wine' and that's not how you spell
'burgh'.  So he made a hypercorrection to the spelling of his family name.

The classic story---and this one probably IS apochryphal---is the Asian with
the name "Ole Olsen."  The man ahead of him in line was asked for his name,
and said "Ole Olsen."  Then the Asian was asked for his name, and he said,
"Sam Ting".

       - James A. Landau (whose own surname survived unchanged its arrival at
Ellis Island in 1896)