Do you feel hardship of remmebering so many names?

A

AmericanWannabe

Registered Users (C)
There are so many immigrants whose names are so hard to remmeber
whether it is at work or residence neighborhood.

I heard that law in some countries like Japan require natualized citizesn
to adopt a local name at the time becoming a citizen. I wonder if the
congress can pass such a law without violating the US
consititution so that everyone mist change their name to
an American-like name when becoming a US citizen.
 
If they had such a law at the beginning (the same time
USA was founded) to anglicanize all names, there would
be no such name as "Kweisi Mfume" now.

The irrgularity of naming cause extra and unnecessary
burden on communications.
 
JoeF said:
I can distinguish between friend and foe, since friends use my nickname.
Click to expand...

You have friends??? :)
Just kidding JoeF, just kidding....
I did, however, notice your generic *americanized* handle on this forum. It does make things convenient, doesn't it. Personally, I feel that having a slightly uncommon name is actually kind of fun. It has spawned conversations with strangers who have become good friends. It has also allowed me to make up stories (mainly to amuse myself) about the origin and meaning of my name.

I personally do use a shortened version of my first name at restaurants, etc. while making reservations, to avoid spelling it out every time, but wouldn't dream of legally changing it.

I will, however, consider naming my first-born Joe :D
 
It is true that a lot of immigrants "americanize" their names in everyday life, just to make it easier on themselves and other people they deal with. Some will go as far as legally changing their names, others will just use aliases.

In my experience, there have been both good and bad effects to using an alias. The good side is that in many situations your "american" name will never be miss-spelled, miss-pronounced, you won't have to spell it every time you give it out to someone not familiar with you or your nationality. The bad side is that your little alias becomes so convenient and grows on you to the extent where you start using it on legal documents where you pretty much have to use your real legal name. That could bring all kinds of troubles and inconveniences.

I say, if someone has problems with their name, they can legally change it. I don't see a problem with that. If you like your name and are too proud of it to change it despite all inconveniences it may cause you in this country, then keep it by all means. This is a personal decision everyone should make on their own. And it is also in my opinion yet another issue where no government involvement is needed or welcome.

Just my 2 cents....
 
I would defenitely agree that have a unique name helps you identify telemarketers a mile away when they call you. Once they know how to pronounce my name, neither Americans nor immgrants have ever had a problem with my name.
AmericanWannabe must be smoking crack.
This country like it or not, is getting more and more diverse by the minute, specially in metropolitan areas. I dont need any kind of statistics to back that up. I have personally seen that in the 14 years that have lived in the US. I probably would have never learnt so much about so many diff cultures, tasted diff kinds of food in my own birth place.
Hispanics make up about 33-36% of the Houston area. Now what, you want to tell them that their kids cannot have names that are not easily pronounced by "others". Now what happens when they cross 50% in 25 years or so? Tell others that they cant have anglo names?
 
AmericanWannabe why would anyone change their identity just to be American? Are you ashamed and inconvenienced by your name or just bothered by other people’s names?

Would you stop speaking your natural language and stop eating ethnic food just to blend in and make it easier on the majority? Do we also need to become white and Anglo-Saxon while we're at? Diversity and the freedom to be different is what America is all about. I would be sad and ashamed to become a bland generic WASPy American.

And someone's name is an important part of who they are, it's their family history, it's what they inherited from their parents, the community they grew up in, and the country the are from. Sure you can come up with a nick name if that makes it easier on occasion. My name has over 20 characters but I am happy with it and would never change it.

For example when Indians immigrate here, do they suddenly adopt "American" food to blend in? Of course not, they keep their cuisine and introduced it to America instead.

Your ignorance is pitiful AmericanWannabe. And you’ll never be ‘American’ because you have no idea what being American that is all about.
 
Albert Einstien said:
I would defenitely agree that have a unique name helps you identify telemarketers a mile away when they call you.
Click to expand...

And that alone may be a sufficient reason for not changing your name to something that sounds "American"
 
Diversity is good -- Interesting names are good .
The brain is a beatiful instrument, more you use it better it gets. I like the idea meeting a person with a different sounding name then I have heard before -- try EZANA. This invokes an idea -- the world is big I know so little and where does this name come? what is the meaning of this word.
 
Been there done that

Actually, during the big immigration wave at the turn of the second last century (1890s-1920), this is exactly what the guys at Ellis Island would do:

Hofmann became Hoffman
Meyrowitz became Meyer
Mueller became Miller
Abramowitz became Abrams
and so on.

Incidentally, Romania used to do this. They violated the non-romanian names of their minorities by adding a 'iescu' to all names.

I once read that every name in Iceland has to either end on 'son' or 'dottir'. Your last name is formed by appending the gender specific suffix to your fathers given name. Now, they have a small number of muslim immigrants/refugees who obtained icelandic citizenship. From what I read, there are now people by the name of 'Mohamed Achmedson' and 'Fatye Mohamedsdottir' on Iceland.

What is an american name anyway ? Everyone just gets renamed 'Rick' or 'Chuck' ?
 
hadron said:
Actually, during the big immigration wave at the turn of the second last century (1890s-1920), this is exactly what the guys at Ellis Island would do:

Hofmann became Hoffman
Meyrowitz became Meyer
Mueller became Miller
Abramowitz became Abrams
and so on.
Click to expand...

There were a lot of unjust things happening way back in 1890-1920, for example women couldn't vote in America until 1920.

I believe AmericanWannabe's thread is a suggestion for future immigration policy. Atrocities of Ellis Island in the past and unfair policies of other countries are irrelevant to the argument.
 
past mistakes

> Atrocities of Ellis Island in the past and unfair policies of
> other countries are irrelevant to the argument.

I respectfully disagree. If you don't look at your past mistakes, your are dammed to repeat them. Also, I can't find anything wrong with looking at other countries and their experiences with somewhat similar policies. I used the romanian example to illustrate how naming people and places can be abused by a schizoid dictator to further his own goals and suppress minorities. The icelandic example just illustrated how the orthodox use of rules can lead to sometimes inadvertently funny results.

I sometimes struggle with fitting some of my colleagues names into the 26 characters reserved for 1st and last names on many forms. But to change peoples names to make things easier seems utterly ridiculous.
(there was a time when O'Hanley was considered an 'un-american' name. There was also a time when beeing catholic or jewish was considered 'un-american'.)

And for the voting issue: In the US, through the judicial and legislative process the issue of voting rights was rectified a long time ago, this is an achievement a number of countries are still lacking.

In case you didn't understand me:
I don't want anyone to change their name to sound more 'american' (whatever that is). If someone encounters difficulties with their name, they can go to probate court and go through the moves to have it simplified.

Btw. I would gladly accept immigration Ellis Island style.
My grandfathers siblings came to the US in the 1920s. All you had to do at the time was to:
a. show up at the Port of Entry.
b. look halfway sane.
c. be willing to work but not have a job lined up.
--> instant green-card.
(unless of course you were chinese, communist, had open TB.....)
If they offered me the same deal today, I would gladly butcher my name.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The late 1800s was the time of the jewish/german/italian immigration into the US. The irish had come a bit earlier. Except for the 1990s, this was the time with the highest proportion of foreign born citizens in the US.

Every wave, after settling down, considered the next to be 'un-american' (no irish need apply). Every time new 'strange' people apperared on americas shores, they were viewed with suspicion by the people already here.

The entire idle discussion here fits well into this framework. There is nothing like an 'american identity'. The US is glued together by optimism, greed and the right to buy a firearm at walmart.

In 2100, people will look back and look at the 1990s as the time of the latino immgration, and who knows, the 2000s as the time of strong indian immigration. (In the 1870s the US imported italian bricklayers and welsh miners. Maybe, looking back one day we will look at the 'indian IT specialist wave' with a similar curiosity)
 
hadron said:
Btw. I would gladly accept immigration Ellis Island style.
My grandfathers siblings came to the US in the 1920s. All you had to do at the time was to:
a. show up at the Port of Entry.
b. look halfway sane.
c. be willing to work but not have a job lined up.
--> instant green-card.
(unless of course you were chinese, communist, had open TB.....)
If they offered me the same deal today, I would gladly butcher my name.
Click to expand...
Really? Often immigrants were detained in bad conditions for months and years, as indefinite prisoners; not because they were communist or had TB either. (And by the way communism didn't start till 1925 even in Russia) Have you visited some of these notorious immigration detention centers of the past like Ellis Island in NY or Angel Island in San Francisco? The stories of some of these people are horrendous. Some even had immediate relatives in the US, like husbands and wives, and still couldn't get out of immigration-prison for years. Your grandfather's siblings must have been lucky.

hadron said:
I don't want anyone to change their name to sound more 'american' (whatever that is). If someone encounters difficulties with their name, they can go to probate court and go through the moves to have it simplified.
Click to expand...
Glad you're opposing AmericanWannabe's original post. Couldn't really tell from your earlier posts.
 
Oh,

> (And by the way communism didn't start till 1925 even in Russia)

Did I miss something ?
I always thought that the communist manifesto was published by Marx and Engels in 1848 ? I am not that firm on the history of communism any more, but the russian communist party was founded some time in the 1880s. And the October revolution of 1917 I guess didn't really happen either....

> Have you visited some of these notorious immigration
> detention centers of the past like Ellis Island in NY

Haven't been to Angel Island, I do however know a bit about Ellis Island. 98% of people who entered the island were eventually admitted, the process usually took between 5 hours and 2 days for the majority of immigrants. Yes, some 10-15% of immigrants were initially detained, but the majority passed through Ellis Island in a matter of days.

I would gladly trade reading 40 words from the bible, climbing up a flight of stairs and some snarling questions from an immigration inspector for the kafkaesque process american immigration has become.

Out of 11 of my grand-dads cousins, 6 made their way into the US in the early twenties. All of them had learned a trade, steam fitters, carpenters, seamstresses and the like. At a point in time (relative to entering the country), when we are still living from one EAD to the next, they had become naturalized citizens and sent their kids to school. (1 of them disappeared in the West, nobody ever found out what happened to him.)

No, things were by no means perfect then. But at least, the US goverment knew that immigrants, willing and able to work, are the motor of US economy. This knowledge has somehow gone lost.
The legacy INS spends more energy on importing the adult children of people who are barely able to fend for themselves, than they spend on approving I140s for people who are here to contribute. (Next year, my federal income tax will be enough to pay the salary of an immigration inspector, including benefits and retirement.)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
hadron, looks like I made a sweeping statement that was not quite right, yeah the communist revolution started 1917 but the czar abdicated only later in the 1920s I thought and till then Russia was technically a monarchy and not a communist country, that's what I meant to say.

Anyways, I haven't done research about Ellis Island to confirm or deny percentages of people admitted and time periods detained! My information comes from tour-guides and documentaries about immigrants who suffered. From what I've heard it wasn't easy back then. And it was all up to the officer, there was no certainty to the process, so it could potentially be unfair on the people detained.

It's not comforting to know that there was a 10-15% (or whatever) chance of being wrongfully imprisoned in terrible conditions, while most of the time you got a green card for just showing up. So personally I prefer the current immigration system - America isn't worth risking prison for.

But I certainly agree with you that legal immigrants today who contribute in to the economy are made to suffer ridiculous bureaucracy which is ultimately hurting and not helping the country.

PS: I had to look up ‘kafkaesque’ in the dictionary
 
> the party was called Social Democratic (and formed in 1898)
> until 1918.

LoL,
I didn't think I would ever be thrown back into debating 'ML' with someone !

But seriously, yes the name communist party came about later, but the russian marxist movement started earlier, a lot earlier. I think the 'League for the Emancipation of Labor' of 1883 could be considered to be the seed point of the movement.

> As far as name changes at Ellis Island, that seems to be a myth.

Not that I can proove it, but changes did occur at some point in the process. I am not sure about the role officials played, I do however know that especially greek and jewish names ended up completely botched. Many immigrants left through ports away from their home countries, some of the alterations might have happened during the boarding process.

> Angel Island was a completely different story. There seems
> to have been quite a lot of racism there.

I think particularly the treatment of chinese immigrants is a dark chapter of american history, I have to admit my only spotty knowledge there.

> Legacy INS is the wrong party to blame (INS/CIS is inefficient,

Oh yes they are. It is a 'institutionally evil' structure. Anytime a law comes down from congress, they will find a way to interpret it in the most restrictive way conceivable. The processes they follow are designed to maximize the time required and to maximize the degree of control they can exert on peoples lives. (or how can you explain the hair-splitting between job titles in the IT sector).

(Even the IRS is less of a desaster than the INS. If I need a microfiche copy of my past tax-returns, it is a phonecall away).

> like the one Canada has (and Australia, for that matter) would be
> more beneficial to the US economy than the current system.

ANY system would be better. The canadian system is a start, it has however one serious flaw: the strong reliance on formal education to determine the 'value' of an immigrant. As a result you have PhD's working construction security but you don't have skilled craftsmen to work on the construction site (ok, ok, this is an oversimplification, but you get the idea)

> the likelyhood for the current system to change is rather small,

Small ? This system is more inert to change than wax to acid.

> From what I've heard it wasn't easy back then. And it was all up
> to the officer, there was no certainty to the process,

And the difference to todays process would be ?

> It's not comforting to know that there was a 10-15%
> (or whatever) chance of being wrongfully imprisoned

Not necessarily 'wrongful'. It was sort of a 'secondary inspection' process. 80% of the people who had to go before the panel got admitted, others had to have a relative post a bond to ensure their economic survival.

I am surely not an expert on Kafka. But looking at the travails of some folks I know, I do feel reminded of 'The trial'.


If I ever plan to bring some relative into the country, here is the plan: I'll buy a small ranch in Montana and a bunch of sheep. Then I post an ad in the local 'help wanted' section for a shepherder. 'two years experience needed'. This will get papers in maybe a year, after 6 months of herding sheep on my ranch he can go on to finish his PhD...Perfectly legal and undoubtedly the fastest way.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Can you simply change your frist name by yourself when you naturalized. Or do you have to go to court to have the name changed?
Socil security office said we have to go to court to change name. But I do not know if the rule is different when we apply the citizenship later on?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top