Analysis Example: Trouble with Names

Trouble with Names

Rotem Landesman

I’ve always had trouble with my name. Often when I go to Starbucks, I choose a different name which won’t prompt the barista (who always ask with good intentions): “how do you spell that'', and at those gift shops that they have an National Parks, they never have Rotem on a keychain or a mug or a fun little sign. As a kid, I was always incredibly bummed by that, while my parents were delighted at the opportunity to save money on yet another souvenir. It made me feel like somehow, no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t get to fit the mold others around me fit so easily.

Our name is one of the biggest pieces of data we carry with us throughout our lives. It may signify where we come from, our roots and heritage, as well as give a clue to outsiders about the trends and current events at the time of our birth. Last names or surnames carry a special significance for thousands around the world, and recent surveys show that less and less women are willing to change their last name when they get married (1), or at all because of this significance. 

In middle school, I remember one of my favorite projects asked me to create a family tree. I asked my parents and grandparents, dug up old documents, and tried to find the origins of the Landesman family, wherever they might be. Unlike my first name, which made me feel uncomfortable and apologetic at coffee shops around the world, my last name was allowed to be a unique piece of data about me, which didn’t need to fit any box or coffee cup.

But the more digging I did, and the more I found out about the journey of my own and millions of other families who came to the United States throughout the ages, the more I wondered about the reliability of last names. Being Jewish, I learned that wherever my ancestors moved around, the ruling power changed, or a new tax system was enacted  - which happens to be more often than one would think - they would have to adapt their names, this precious data, to fit their surroundings. Eastern European Jews, for example, did not have surnames until the late 19th century. Since they lived in small villages, there was no need to distinguish between two Bobs - there was only one. But when Napoleon captured much of what is today Eastern Europe, many were ordered to get surnames for tax purposes, and then again during the Emancipation period and throughout the 1800’s. In general, names were assigned to the poor and sold to the rich (2). The values and beliefs of the ruling class at the time were stamped into my ancestors’ passports and marriage certificates, ensuring the context within which they were given would be locked in history as well.

Name changes, and more commonly surnames which were restructured to fit the encoding system of the new world, are certainly not only a Jewish phenomenon. For generations families have told their children stories of how their names changed when they went through major immigration ports like Ellis Island in New York, with officers deciding on whim to change surnames to something that was “easier to pronounce” and “sounded more American”. My partner’s name, for example, having been of German name when his great grandparents arrived in the US, was changed to Aclander - a rough translation of the German word auslander, meaning ‘foreigner’.  Although the Smithsonian recently tried to debunk this theory, and blame the Captains of the ships that brought millions of immigrants to these shores for the change, the result stays the same (3). Context, or metadata about generations was lost to fit a new world full of opportunities, with or without consent. 

One could argue that this change was for the better, and benefited those who entered the United States looking to fit in, integrate, and leave their lives behind. In the same breath, I could only imagine the pain of a parent looking down at their child’s identity card and not recognizing the surname that they’ve carried their entire lives in the writing, instead seeing an “easier to pronounce” version of that same history.

The world today is different. Being more interconnected and internationally accepting than ever before, we’ve largely adapted to seeing all types of first and surnames around us. It’s a beautiful thing, in essence; we are, now more than ever, allowed and encouraged to keep the context of our roots, encouraged (at least in the state of Washington) to change our name, our primal data point, to whatever we feel represents us best. But, as I mentioned above, it keeps generations of immigrant kids like myself isolated in the smallest of ways.

With that in mind, I remember calling my dad when I decided to move to the US and start this Graduate program, excited to tell him the news: I was changing my name to something more palatable, something that won’t get a mnemonic device attached to it so my students could remember it wherever I taught. “What do you think?” I asked. And got quiet. “I think”, my dad carefully said, “that giving up the history, the richness, and the strength that your name represents - all to make your Starbucks order a bit easier - is a crime not unlike the one those Immigration officers did to our great grandparents when they left their home country. Can’t your friends just learn to pronounce it?” 

I guess he had a point; if a piece of data, such a crucial piece of data like your name and its particular context is important enough - perhaps it is the encoding system that needs to change, rather than it. 

1)  https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/07/health/women-change-names-marriage-wellness/index.html
2)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_surname Links to an external site.
3)  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian-did-ellis-island-officials-really-change-names-immigrants-180961544/