A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America

by Kirsten Fermaglich

Overview

A groundbreaking history of the practice of Jewish name changing in the 20th century, showcasing just how much is in a name.

Our thinking about Jewish name changing tends to focus on clichés: ambitious movie stars who adopted glamorous new names or insensitive Ellis Island officials who changed immigrants’ names for them. But as Kirsten Fermaglich elegantly reveals, the real story is much more profound. Scratching below the surface, she examines previously unexplored name change petitions to upend the clichés, revealing that in twentieth-century New York City, Jewish name changing was actually a broad-based and voluntary behavior: thousands of ordinary Jewish men, women, and children legally changed their names in order to respond to an upsurge of antisemitism. Rather than trying to escape their heritage or “pass” as non-Jewish, most name-changers remained active members of the Jewish community. While name changing allowed Jewish families to avoid antisemitism and achieve white middle-class status, the practice also created pain within families and became a stigmatized, forgotten aspect of American Jewish culture.

This first history of name changing in the United States offers a previously unexplored window into American Jewish life throughout the twentieth century. A Rosenberg by Any Other Name demonstrates how historical debates about immigration, antisemitism and race, class mobility, gender and family, the boundaries of the Jewish community, and the power of government are reshaped when name changing becomes part of the conversation.

Mining court documents, oral histories, archival records, and contemporary literature, Fermaglich argues convincingly that name changing had a lasting impact on American Jewish culture. Ordinary Jews were forced to consider changing their names as they saw their friends, family, classmates, co-workers, and neighbors do so. Jewish communal leaders and civil rights activists needed to consider name changers as part of the Jewish community, making name changing a pivotal part of early civil rights legislation. And Jewish artists created critical portraits of name changers that lasted for decades in American Jewish culture. This book ends with the disturbing realization that the prosperity Jews found by changing their names is not as accessible for the Chinese, Latino, and Muslim immigrants who wish to exercise that right today.

Winner, 2019 Saul Viener Book Prize, given by the American Jewish Historical Society

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479872992
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Series:	Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History , #9
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	237
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Kirsten Fermaglich is Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Michigan State University. She is the author of American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares (2006) and the co-editor of Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, Norton critical edition (2013). She is the co-editor of the journal American Jewish History.

Table of Contents

Introduction Sean Ferguson Winona Ryder, and Other Jewish Names 1

Part I The Rise of Jewish Name Changing In New York City After World War I

1 "My Name Proved to Be a Great Handicap": Developing a Pattern of Jewish Family Name Changing in the Interwar Years 25

2 "What's Uncle Sam's Last Name?": The Impact of World War II on Jews and Name Changing 45

Part II Responses To Jewish Name Changing After World War II

3 "I Changed My Name": Cultural Debates over Name Changing, Passing, and Jewish Identity in the Postwar Era 69

4 "Have You Been Known by Another Name?": Name Changing and the Politics of Postwar Civil Rights Legislation 101

Part III The Decline of Jewish Name Changing In The 1960s and Beyond

5 "My Resentment of Arbitrary Authority": The Decline and Erasure of Name Changing in American Jewish Society 131

6 "Not Everyone Is Prepared to Remake Themselves": Jews and Other Name Changers in the 21st Century 151

Epilogue 177

Acknowledgments 189

Notes 195

Index 237

About the Author 245

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/15/2018
Fermaglich (history, Jewish studies, Michigan State Univ.; American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares) has written an important history of the evolution of Jewish name-changing in America, not specifically as an escape from Jewish identity but as a means toward greater access to success in social, cultural, and political life in 20th-century America. In tracing the balancing act between the desire to become more American while experiencing the loss of ethnic pride, this scholarly book shows that most name-changing came about as a result of anti-Semitism both before and after World War II. Using court documents and other public records, Fermaglich demonstrates that Jewish name-changing was an important sociological phenomenon from the 1910s to the 1960s. The well-written and thoroughly documented narrative effectively demonstrates the struggle that individuals underwent to become fully realized as Jewish Americans. VERDICT Highly recommended for general readers as well as academic collections of Jewish studies, ethnic studies, and immigration studies.—Herbert E. Shapiro, Lifelong Learning Soc., Florida Atlantic Univ., Boca Raton

Library Journal

08/27/2018
Fermaglich (American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares), a professor of history and Jewish studies at Michigan State University, supplies much fascinating anecdotal material and socioeconomic analysis in this history of Jewish name-changing in New York City in the mid-20th century. Formal petitions by Jews to anglicize or otherwise change their names—a somewhat cumbersome and expensive process—increased in the 1940s from 250–300 per year to 800. Fermaglich shows how, particularly in the 1940s and ’50s, name changing was undertaken overwhelmingly by native-born Jews who lived in largely upper-middle-class neighborhoods, not out of self-hatred but because, in a time of considerable anti-Semitism, they sought a measure of “personal invisibility” to afford themselves more educational and professional opportunities. She discusses how the end of mass anti-Semitism (in the second half of the century) and the growth of ethnic pride among Jews (and others) led not only to a significant decline in Jewish name changing but also to the practice being viewed with disfavor by many younger Jews. She pads her work a little at the end by cursorily discussing name-changing among other ethnic groups, including Arabs and Muslims in the post-9/11 era. Still, this is a fine contribution to an important, previously underexplored area of American Jewish identity and social history. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"The real history behind Jewish name changing in the US . . . a worthy accomplishment. One doesn't have to be a . . . historian to appreciate A Rosenberg by Any Other Name . . . anyone with an interest in the subject matter [can] enjoy it."

Foreword Reviews

"Both entertaining and enlightening, A Rosenberg By Any Other Name comes up smelling, well, like a rose."

Canadian Jewish News

"Contesting longstanding stereotypes, Fermaglich (history and Jewish studies, Michigan State Univ.) creatively examines name changing by Jews in the US, focusing on New York City Jews. From the onset of her study, Fermaglich refutes the notion that name changing was an individual or isolated act, asserting that it dramatically impacted American Jewish culture."

CHOICE

"The beauty of A Rosenberg by Any Other Name lies in its choice of a site so rife with potential and yet, one that seems so utterly banal. Fermaglich offers us new appreciation for the levels of complexity that Jewish identity was forced to take on in post-war America. It is a powerful story about anti-semitism, adaptation, markers of identity, and the kinds of choices and sacrifices that people must make in the name of access, privilege, and commitments to their communities."

Deborah Dash Moore

"Fermaglichs thoroughly researched book delves into many implications of changing ones name and examines the way that Jewish culture was shaped overall by the practice."

Jewish Exponent

"Kirsten Fermaglich’s insightful book explores the seemingly ordinary phenomenon of Jewish name changing to shed light on broad themes of racial and ethnic identity, and the complicated ways that Americans—and particularly American Jews—negotiated the markers of distinctiveness and racial “otherness” with the goals of integration and access... While only a minority of Jews petitioned to change their names, the phenomenon proves to be an instructive window for examining the changing boundaries of race and ethnicity in America."

The Journal of American History

The real history behind Jewish name changing in the US . . . a worthy accomplishment. One doesn't have to be a . . . historian to appreciate A Rosenberg by Any Other Name. . . anyone with an interest in the subject matter [can] enjoy it."- Foreword Reviews

"Fermaglich’s thoroughly researched book delves into many implications of changing one’s name and examines the way that Jewish culture was shaped overall by the practice."- Jewish Exponent

"An important history . . . Well-written and thoroughly documented . . . demonstrates the struggle that individuals underwent to become fully realized as Jewish Americans. Highly recommended."- STARRED Library Journal

"Fermaglich's thorough research and bright insights produce a provocative account of a seldom-explored cultural phenomenon."- Kirkus Reviews

"Fascinating . . . A fine contribution to an important, previously underexplored area of American Jewish identity and social history."- Publishers Weekly

“The beauty of A Rosenberg by Any Other Name lies in its choice of a site so rife with potential and yet, one that seems so utterly banal. Fermaglich offers us new appreciation for the levels of complexity that Jewish identity was forced to take on in post-war America. It is a powerful story about anti-semitism, adaptation, markers of identity, and the kinds of choices and sacrifices that people must make in the name of access, privilege, and commitments to their communities.”-Deborah Dash Moore,author of Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and a People

From the Publisher

2018-08-21

An exploration of how, during times of social stress and rampant anti-Semitism, large numbers of Jews in America formally applied to change their names to less ethnically identifiable ones.

Fermaglich (History and Jewish Studies/Michigan State Univ.; American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957-1965, 2006, etc.) looks at the applications for name changes in New York City from the 1920s to the present. She notes that the "institutionalized" anti-Semitism in the country following World War I prompted many to register for a name change; sometimes, entire families did so. The changers usually felt that their patently Jewish names were hurting them regarding employment, residence, college applications, and other areas. As the author notes, sometimes these changes created conflict in families—and among the general Jewish population, who occasionally found such changes to be evidence of self-loathing and of disrespect for cultural history. But as Fermaglich demonstrates, the trend has diminished: Non-Jewish Americans have become less openly biased against Jews, and colleges have removed application questions designed to identify Jews. In NYC today, Jews no longer dominate the requests for name changes. The author clearly spent hours poring through official records in the city (she provides some charts and other illustrations), and she offers summaries of similar research done elsewhere in the country and shows us how the name-changing practice appeared in the popular culture throughout the decades. Some familiar names pop up in her discussions—e.g., Arthur Miller, Henry Roth, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth. The text is academic in tone and presentation (40 pages of endnotes follow), and the virtual absence of subheadings and breaks of other sorts renders the volume not entirely reader-friendly. However, the rewards for resolute readers are considerable.

Fermaglich's thorough research and bright insights produce a provocative account of a seldom-explored cultural phenomenon.

Kirkus Reviews