And just to add to what Roy said, for some European's emigrating, only the local priest might read and write, or read and write in one of the two acceptable languages - latin and english. So when my husband's parents came to Canda from Poland their passports, filled out for them by the village priest, were in latin. When they got to Canada, the customs officer couldn't read them, so he did the best he could. Havarka became Howorko. Believe me no Polish person recognizes the name and those who would guess at ethnicity by name, tend to think it may be Japanese. Brenda Howorko Executive Assistant to the Deputy Minister Alberta Energy Ph: (780) 427-7727 Fx: (780) 422-3920 -----Original Message----- From: Roy Johnson [mailto:royj@webster.edu] Sent: June 11, 2006 9:01 PM To: PACE-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [PACE-L] Names I sent this but never did see it posted. It didn't come back to me. A difficulty that genealogists who are seeking immigrant ancestors often run into is the problem of name changes when the ancestor enters the US, due to the official writing it down as he hears it, which may not be the actual spelling, particularly for non-English names. We have that in the Pace society with Pees-Pace. It will help in the following anecdote if you know a little German, but I think it will be funny even if you don't. Johann Schmidt was an immigrant from Germany. He had decided to Americanize his name to the English equivalent of John Smith. John Smith is just as hard to remember to a German as Johann Schmidt would be to an American, so he repeated it over and over. Later, a relative coming to visit from Germany finally caught up with him and was surprised to be told that his new name was Sean (pronounced "shawn") Ferguson. "How in the world did you get to be Sean Ferguson-an Irish name?" the friend asked. "It's like this', he said. I practiced and practiced, but when I entered the country, there was this big gruff Irishman taking names. I was so nervous I couldn't think of it. All I could do was mumble "schon vergessen" (already forgot) in German. And that's how I got to be Sean Ferguson." That would give some future researcher nightmares. Roy Johnson ==== PACE Mailing List ==== Check out the new Pace Society of America web page at: www.pacesociety.org, and please join the Pace Society of America for only $25.00 per year.