I was looking at some old family documents and found out that one of my great grandfathers changed his name at some point after coming to America from Germany, this piqued my interest because his name was Jacob Siegel, a name that to me is probably the most Jewish name someone can have, at least in a German Ashkenazi Jew sense.
So I was wondering– after also recently learning that it’s a myth that immigrants were forced to change their name at Ellis island, and that Jews were the most common ethnic group to change their name to try to fit in –if maybe my family was Jewish and I just never knew it, it’s hard to know for sure because all the people that could have told me about my family history are now dead, and also because my family is Christian, though not very observant.
Maybe this question is better served for a historian, but it’s specifically about Jewish history so I thought it was appropriate for this subreddit, but to sum my question up, how widespread was it for Jews to change their name upon arriving in America, and was it also common for those Jews to convert to Christianity.
Idk if anyone looks at op user names, because I usually don’t, or even if you do what the chances are that you’d have read my other posts, but I’ve asked questions here before, and I want just want to be clear, I love Jewish history and culture, so I apologize if I’m just making a bunch of unjustified assumptions, this discovery really just excited me since I already have such a deep appreciation for the Jewish people, even if I learn that it was very common for Jews to change their name, that doesn’t necessarily confirm that I’d be Jewish, but it would help me to find out more, so I’d greatly appreciate if anyone could help me out with this.
submitted by /u/mfpotatoeater99
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