THE VEXATIOUS QUESTION OF NAMES
Another obstruction goes to the question of our treatment of the foreign-born laborer in industry—especially if he bear what we choose to regard as a “queer” name, difficult for us to spell or pronounce. The courts have, properly, no doubt, no patience with assumed names—particularly in a case where the alien cannot remember the name under which he entered the country. But it is a very common practice, in concerns employing a large number of immigrants, for the minor officials of the company, superintendents and foremen, to attach a name to a job, and insist upon calling the man who occupies it, “Mike Murphy,” or what not else, because that was the name of the first incumbent, and it is easier to pronounce than “Bahaoud,” “Behrensmayer,” or “Przybylski.” This, and the even more common practice of calling a man by a number, rather than a name, results in a vast deal of confusion, in a substantial discouragement of self-respect, and in the ultimate establishment of the neighborhood identity of a polysyllabic Greek or Armenian, perhaps, with a fine old Irish name. This will not do in the naturalization court. The petitioner must come in under at least the same name that he bore when he entered the country, and there must be no suspicion as to its not being his own.
But he does not have to keep that name. It is prescribed as lawful for the court in its discretion, “at the time and as a part of the naturalization of any aliens, ... upon the petition of such alien, to make a decree changing the name of said alien.” The fact of which the court must be convinced is that the petitioner is not attempting to conceal his real identity for the purpose of escaping payment of just debts or punishment for crime. Many aliens do thus change their names, and there have been cases in which the judge virtually compelled them to do so.
A naturalization judge said to the writer:
I have heard of a high-handed old judge, somewhere in the Northwest, who was in the habit of “suggesting” to every alien who came before him with a complicated mouthful of name that he change it to “Abraham Lincoln,” “Benjamin Franklin,” “George Washington,” or “Grover Cleveland.” No doubt you could find many a Pole or Swede naturalized as “Thomas Jefferson” or “Alexander Hamilton,” whose father, living in the same town, was known as “Konrad Kowalewski,” or “Ole Johanssen.”
Each nationality has in this country name-complications of this character peculiarly its own. The Swedes, for an example, have a habit of taking for their own surname the Christian name of a favorite aunt, uncle, or other relative, upon reaching the age of twenty-one years. Sven Svensen—which means “Sven, the son of Sven”—may undertake to compliment his uncle Olaf by calling himself Sven Olafsen. Suppose he came to this country under the name of Sven Svensen, before he was eighteen; but for several years before filing his declaration came to be known to everybody—including himself—as Sven Olafsen, and regarded his old name as a “childish thing” of no consequence to anybody. He applies as Sven Olafsen for his certificate of arrival, the immigration and naturalization bureaus have great difficulty in finding it, and when it does come along it is in the name of Sven Svensen. Often names are adopted in affectionate memory of the town from which the alien comes. Many Italians, for convenience, drop off a couple of syllables of awkwardly long names. Among the Greeks a typical case would be that of one, “Harris,” whose old-country name was Harralabopoulos.
Another kind of complication appears in the case of an alien whose true name was Isaac Brody; but he came on a steamship ticket issued to, and in the name of, his uncle, Isaac Boovris, and was recorded under that name by the immigration authorities. When he filed his declaration of intention he was advised to file under the name Boovris, to facilitate his certificate of arrival when that should be required. When he filed his final petition, after living and doing business for several years in this country under his true name of Brody, he asked to be naturalized under that name. The court refused, requiring him to file a new declaration as Isaac Brody and wait two years longer, calling attention to the penal statute which makes it an offense to apply for naturalization under an assumed or fictitious name; remarking that the court might have changed the name or amended the petition “if the error in the original declaration had been clerical, or had been innocent.”[77]
A Pennsylvania court said in the case of one Wicenty Pilipos, who after arrival informally changed his name to William Phillips:
We may concede that any person may change his name, and be naturalized under his new name; yet, if he does so, he must petition the court for that purpose, so that the record will show the whole transaction, and identify him as the person who has discarded his original name, under which he landed in this country. This is especially necessary to prevent any other person from perpetrating a fraud, by being naturalized under the discarded name.[78]