I think much of the dispute about names changing comes from a > misunderstanding about names. People's names weren't a legal part of their > identity back then as they are now. There weren't even civil birth > registrations, and if someone wanted to change their name they just started > spelling it different themselves. Maybe lawyers didn't have quite as strong > a lobby then. Now you have to go to court, publish so many times in the > paper etc.. Just because a name was spelled incorrectly at Ellis Island did > not constitute a legal name change. If the family chose to keep spelling it > that way after they were here maybe they just thought that was how it should > be spelled in English. The most "official" record of birth and birth name > is a baptismal record for the era before civil registration in the US. My > grandfather's surname was badly mispelled on his baptismal record, in a > church the family had been in for 20 years, and this was my German side with > a 4 letter surname! It was spelled "Bohe" rather than "Boll", but that > didn't change the family name. If I hadn't known the date from his death > record, I never would have found that baptism from an index or skimming the > record. Judy