I have an incomprehensible last name and it often gets butchered by busy people.
It would not surprise me at all if some overworked government employee doesn't really care what noises the foreigner is trying to make.
This was in a time when lots of people couldn't read or write.
"Someone wanting to book passage to America, Canada, Australia, South America, etc., would have had no difficulty locating an agent. Agents quoted ticket prices to the would-be traveler, accepted payment, and then recorded each traveler’s name and other identifying information (the specific information collected varied over the years). The information taken down by the agents was sent to the home office, where it was transferred by shipping company clerks onto large blank sheets provided by the US government. Those sheets became the passenger lists which later were used by American port officials."
> Records show that immigration officials often actually corrected mistakes in immigrants' names, since inspectors knew three languages on average and each worker was usually assigned to process immigrants who spoke the same languages.
> Many immigrant families Americanized their surnames afterward, either immediately following the immigration process or gradually after assimilating into American culture. Because the average family changed their surname five years after immigration, the Naturalization Act of 1906 required documentation of name changes.
Where do you place the burden of proof when someone makes up a story with no evidence and which contradict all legitimate histocal sources - and another comment calls bullshit?
The grandparent anecdote is very clearly a work of imagination, while historical sources show that new names were not assigned at Ellis Island, and that Ellis Island officials were multilingual and assigned to immigrant cases based on language.
This is a myth.