Among the immigrants of other stocks some extraordinarily radical changes in name are to be observed. Greek names of five, and even eight syllables shrink to /Smith/; Hungarian names that seem to be all consonants are reborn in such euphonious forms as /Martin/ and /Lacy/. I have encountered a /Gregory/ who was born /Grgurevich/ in Serbia; a /Uhler/ who was born /Uhlyarik/; a /Graves/ who descends from the fine old Dutch family of /'sGravenhage/. I once knew a man named /Lawton/ whose grandfather had been a /Lautenberger/. First he shed the /berger/ and then he changed the spelling of /Lauten/ to make it fit the inevitable American mispronunciation. There is, again, a family of /Dicks/ in the South whose ancestor was a /Schwettendieck/--apparently a Dutch or Low German name. There is, yet again, a celebrated American artist, of the Bohemian patronymic of /Hrubka/, who has abandoned it for a surname which is common to all the Teutonic languages, and is hence easy for Americans. The Italians, probably because of the relations established by the Catholic church, often take Irish names, as they marry Irish girls; it is common to hear of an Italian pugilist or politician named /Kelly/ or /O'Brien/. The process of change is often informal, but even legally it is quite facile. The Naturalization Act of June 29, 1906, authorizes the court, as a part of the naturalization of any alien, to make an order changing his name. This is frequently done when he receives his last papers; sometimes, if the newspapers are to be believed, without his solicitation, and even against his protest. If the matter is overlooked at the time, he may change his name later on, like any other citizen, by simple application to a court of record.
Among names of Anglo-Saxon origin and names naturalized long before the earliest colonization, one notes certain American peculiarities, setting off the nomenclature of the United States [Pg282] from that of the mother country. The relative infrequency of hyphenated names in America is familiar; when they appear at all it is almost always in response to direct English influences.[28] Again, a number of English family names have undergone modification in the New World. /Venable/ may serve as a specimen. The form in England is almost invariably /Venables/, but in America the final /s/ has been lost, and every example of the name that I have been able to find in the leading American reference-books is without it. And where spellings have remained unchanged, pronunciations have been frequently modified. This is particularly noticeable in the South. /Callowhill/, down there, is commonly pronounced /Carrol/; /Crenshawe/ is /Granger/; /Hawthorne/, /Horton/; /Heyward/, /Howard/; /Norsworthy/, /Nazary/; /Ironmonger/, /Munger/; /Farinholt/, /Fernall/; /Camp/, /Kemp/; /Buchanan/, /Bohannan/; /Drewry/, /Droit/; /Enroughty/, /Darby/; and /Taliaferro/, /Tolliver/.[29] The English /Crowninshields/ pronounce every syllable of their name; the American /Crowninshields/ commonly make it /Crunshel/. /Van Schaick/, an old New York name, is pronounced /Von Scoik/. A good many American Jews, aiming at a somewhat laborious refinement, change the pronunciation of the terminal /stein/ in their names so that it rhymes, not with /line/, but with /bean/. Thus, in fashionable Jewish circles, there are no longer any /Epsteins/, /Goldsteins/ and /Hammersteins/ but only /Epsteens/, /Goldsteens/ and /Hammersteens/. The American Jews differ further from the English in pronouncing /Levy/ to make the first syllable rhyme with /tea/; the English Jews always make the name /Lev-vy/. To match such [Pg283] American prodigies as /Darby/ for /Enroughty/, the English themselves have /Hools/ for /Howells/, /Sillinger/ for /St. Leger/, /Sinjin/ for /St. John/, /Pool/ for /Powell/, /Weems/ for /Wemyss/, /Kerduggen/ for /Cadogen/, /Mobrer/ for /Marlborough/, /Key/ for /Cains/, /Marchbanks/ for /Marjoribanks/, /Beecham/ for /Beauchamp/, /Chumley/ for /Cholmondeley/, /Trosley/ for /Trotterscliffe/, and /Darby/ for /Derby/, not to mention /Maudlin/ for /Magdalen/.