Types of German Surname Changes in America
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TYPES OF GERMAN SURNAME CHANGES IN AMERICA ur names are very much part of what de- bilized. The move to the new linguistic envi- Ofines us as a person.1 The given name ronment brings with it adaptations and, in identifies us as individuals within the group in some cases, drastic changes. which we live and function. Normally, we are As a nation of immigrants, the United States the only person identified by that particular has become home to millions of families whose name within the group. Most of us have given surnames were no longer in harmony with the names that our parents liked for some reason prevailing language or its orthographic rules. or other, selected in a rather accidental fashion. This is certainly the reason for a laissez-faire atti- Our surname is, of course, anything but acci- tude towards name changes as observed by dental. A person's surname, also called the Howard F. Barker: family name, is the reference point which de- Changes of name have never been prohibited fines our relationship to society at large. It in this country and are rarely questioned by links us to the generations of our family which the law. Indeed, slight modifications are not came before us as well as to our living relatives recognized as changes, provided the same beyond the immediate family. The family name sound is retained. Given the considerable amount of illiteracy, especially in colonial opens up vistas of ancestry, family history, na- times, and a continual pressure on foreign tional origin, religious background. names to make them more American, numer- Originally all names, whether given or fam- ous alterations have ensued.3 ily, were based on meaningful words and were The overview which follows establishes a formed or bestowed on the basis of what they classification system for alterations to German meant. Over time, changes in the language names which occurred after the bearers of have frequently obscured the original mean- those names immigrated to America.4 ings. This is particularly true of given names. In his book German-American Names, George In a surname the original meaning often re- F. Jones articulates the popular notion that the mains obvious as long as the name stays within name changes originated with the captains of the language of its origin, e.g., names such as the immigrant ships: Carpenter and Weaver in English or Zimmermann and Weber in German tell us that the ancestor When the immigrants boarded their ships at with whom the name originated was a carpen- Rotterdam, the English captains had difficulty ter or a weaver respectively. Even with less in writing their manifests or ships [sic] lists. Knowing no German, and unfamiliar with Ger- transparent names, a lingering knowledge man dialects, the scribes wrote down the about the meaning of the family name is names as they heard them, sometime in the handed down from generation to generation form of the English names most resembling the sound. In this way, Theiss, Weiss, and Weid- in most families. 5 Given that one's name is so much a part of mann became Dice, Wise and Whiteman [. .] what defines us as a person, most people would Although it is true that the ship lists fre- consider meddling with their names as the quently show the kind of spelling changes equivalent of an assault upon their personality. Jones describes, immigrants were under no At least this would be the case in European obligation to use their names in the shape they countries.2 But when a person moves from the had been spelled by the captain or his clerks country and language in which his or her after their arrival on American shores.6 Until name originated to a different linguistic envi- the immigration process was formalized by ronment, as is the case upon emigration, what channelling all immigrants through Ellis Is- is left of a name's semantic transparency is lost. land, which was not until 1892, immigrants did Also lost is the link to the standard orthogra- not receive an official immigration document. phy in the original language. As a consequence As to the misspellings, it is unlikely that the im- the written manifestation of the name is desta- migrants even remembered in what shape -23- German Surnames their names had been taken down—if they the correct wording only in cases of outright could read at all. As H. L. Mencken7 observed, translation. "[t]he early German immigrants had no very The following overview of changes that were definite ideas about the spelling of their own most common uses the system and terminol- names." Of equally little long-term conse- ogy designed by Einar Haugen11 in his discus- quence, as far as name spellings were con- sion of Norwegian surnames in America. Modi- cerned, was the act of putting one's signature fications and additions accommodate the under the oath of allegiance or signing the developments that specifically concern sur- document abjuring the Church of Rome, as names that are of German origin. Examples was required by law.8 are taken from the author's files collected over An official act of somewhat more con- a period of almost two decades, verified and sequence was the registration of land pur- augmented by checks on the PhoneDisc12 sys- chases in the local courts. Here again, German tem. Particularly illustrative examples are also surnames appear in all kinds of shapes, either taken from existing studies. perfectly German or totally Americanized, or Haugen distinguished retention from revision in between. The American bureaucracy solved and substitution. In the case of retention, the the problem by establishing the principle of original spelling is preserved but pronuncia- idem sonans, that is, if different name spellings tion shows the influence of the English-speak- "sounded the same," a claim of an unbroken ing environment. Revision includes respelling, line of ownership was acknowledged. elimination of unfamiliar letter combinations, Today, most scholars are in agreement that and abbreviating. In the case of substitution, in the majority of cases name changes are no trace of the name's original orthographic likely to have occurred gradually rather than manifestation is preserved. Haugen noted that through an official act.9 Immigrants pro- "in practice these alternatives might overlap, nounced their names in much the same ways since the orthographic revision could make a they had pronounced them in the Old Coun- name coincide with a previously existing Eng- try. Their English-speaking neighbors picked lish name."13 Still, such cases do not invalidate up the names as sounds, possibly making a the basic distinctions, which prove useful in mental picture of a spelling according to the bringing some order into what H. L. Mencken rules of the English language. When it came to called "a dreadful mess."14 writing the names, those mental pictures were put onto paper. As long as the bearers of the I. RETENTION OF THE GERMAN names still knew German and understood the SPELLING spelling of their name, they would either cor- Not all German names changed or were rect the misspellings or just disregard them. changed. In the areas of the country that were But the time would come when the German settled when general literacy had already es- language was lost within the family and the feel tablished a predominance of the written over for what was correct in German spelling no the spoken medium, many names that are com- longer prevailed. Sooner or later many would plicated even by German standards have re- get tired of the constant need to correct. As a tained their spellings. For the city of Milwaukee result, the world around them would settle on this includes, according to the city telephone spellings that would be easy to write and re- directory, Bauernfeind, Eineichner, Eisenhauer, member for a person used to hearing and writ- Friedrichsohn, Harnischfeger, Heinzelmann, Neuen- ing the English language.10 In most cases, and schwander, Pfannenstiel, Schumacher, Schwarzkopf, certainly in most cases where the Anglicized Schwerdtfeger, Seidensticker, Sichlassenfallen, Stadt- spelling produced a resemblance of the sound mueller, Uihlein and many others. of the German original, it is therefore more ap- propriate to say that the names "changed" With Persistence of German Pronunciation rather than "were changed." "Were changed" is Names may retain their spelling but will -24- German Surnames most likely be affected in their pronunciation. German origin. Some names may get by with The relationship between symbol and sound is minor changes, such as Fischer, Frick, Keller. language-specific; German names transferred Others become unrecognizable to a German into an English-speaking environment will be ear, such as Ueberroth ['jub∂, raθ]. pronounced according to the rules of English. Spelling pronunciation takes care of the two There are very few German names which German consonant sounds not found in Eng- would be pronounced the same in both En- lish, [ç] and [x] are both represented by <ch> glish and German. Most of those are one-sylla- in German orthography. Spelling pro- ble names, e.g., Beck, Fick, Lind, Lipp, Mencken, nunciation produces [k] (as found in ache and Mett, Meyer, Misch... mechanic) in names such as Schlicht and Eichhoff, or (less frequently) [tſ], e.g., in Koch. The most With Partial Persistence of German audible change concerns the letter <z>, pro- Pronunciation nounced [ts] in German but [z] in English, as German or near-German pronunciation may in Ziegler, Zimmerman(n), Schmelzer. In the case of persist against the rules of English. "Individual vowels, spelling pronunciation replaces German families can make their wishes felt," Haugen15 [e] by English [i] as in Peters and Seemann, and ,i]) by [u] in Steuben and Eulerכ] observed.