42 | OCTOBER 31 • 2019
I
n a New York courthouse,
seated in an area that had
decades-old files, Kirsten
Fermaglich did research. She
spent hour after hour, spanned
over days, then months and
ultimately 12
years, looking for
reasons Jewish
individuals and
families changed
their last names.
While the sto-
ries were gripping,
her work as an associate pro-
fessor of history and Jewish
studies at Michigan State
University impelled her to
probe timeline trends, and she
found them along with unex-
pected singular stories.
The stories and trends have
been shared through her book
A Rosenberg by Any Other
Name (New York University
Press). She will speak at the
Detroit Jewish Book Fair on
Sunday, Nov. 3.
“I love the names, both the
old ones and the new ones,
” says
Fermaglich, 49, whose Polish-
descended father decided to
keep his surname, which she
kept after marrying rather than
taking her husband’
s last name
of Gold.
“Because I have this funny
long name, I’
m interested in
names, and I’
m interested in
Jews who have been at the
margins. I came to like the
petitioners as I read their
stories and their efforts to get
what they felt they needed by
changing their names.”
Fermaglich describes the rise
in name changing after World
War I as motivated by the
anti-Semitism people felt was
carried out as Jewish-sounding
names impeded acceptance by
schools and places of employ-
ment. Toward the end of World
War II, anti-Semitism also
involved considerations of class
mobility.
Changing to more American-
sounding names declined in
the 1960s, when anti-Semitism
declined. In rare instances,
young people reclaimed original
family names (see sidebar).
“I found a lot of famous peti-
tions, including those of Gene
Wilder and Paul Muni, but I
didn’
t want to focus on famous
people because petitioning
was so ordinary,
” Fermaglich
explains. “We know about
famous people who changed
their names, but we don’
t know
about ordinary people who
changed their names.
“The petition I found most
interesting and really stuck
with me had to do with a man
named Elias Biegelman. He
was a soldier, like so many of
the people I write about, and
he was bullied, humiliated
and isolated. He associated all
that with his name, which he
changed to Ellis Beal.”
Fermaglich, who chose to do
research in New York because
of access to courthouse records
and the Center for Jewish
History, did some research in
Michigan to confirm the local
implications of what was found.
She wanted to stress, especial-
ly with the current upturn in
anti-Semitism, the significance
of changing names, what she
defines as legal behavior to
allow a better livelihood and
pursuit of happiness.
The book covers Allan
Gale, retired from a long
Michigan career with the
Jewish Community Relations
Council/AJC. He came to
regret that the family name
was changed from Goldfein.
Fermaglich, interested in the
stories of history since she was
a young girl growing up in New
Jersey, teaches American history
after 1876, American Jewish
culture, American Jewish histo-
Arts&Life
books
What’s in a Name?
Book shows how anti-Semitism led to
labeling, job denial and more, leading
many Jews to change their names.
SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Farmaglich
A range of reasons prompted Metro
Detroiters and/or their forebears to change
their last names.
For Joe Lewis of Oak Park, it was a rec-
ommended change decided by his father
and two uncles, who had confronted Nazi
threats in Belgium and moved
to England.
“My father and my uncles
joined the British army, and
army counselors advised them
to add an ‘
s’
to Lewi,” Lewis
says.
The reasoning behind the advice had to
do with preventing immediate death. The
brothers were told the new name could
give the impression they were Welsh, thus
evading the outright killing of Jews discov-
ered by Nazi forces.
In contrast, Flo Robbins Paterni of West
Bloomfield says her father changed his
name the week before she
was born essentially to pre-
vent his children from expe-
riencing the discrimination
he had known. He went from
Ssmuel Rabinowitz to Samuel
Robbins.
“My father worked in a car
factory, where there was a lot of anti-Sem-
itism,” she says. “Once he changed his
name, he seemed to be all right. He said he
wanted to fix it so his children would have
better lives as well.”
Terri Stearn of Beverly Hills learned why
her husband’
s grandfather, Jess Stern,
from
Hungary, changed his name
from Stern, and it had nothing
to do with religion. There was
another person in the factory
where he worked with his
exact name, and that caused
a lot of confusion. With the
new spelling, having an “a” standing for
America, circumstances cleared up.
Don Cohen of West Bloomfield reversed
the usual name change sequence, reclaim-
Detroiters Share Why They Changed Their Names
Joe Lewis
Flo Paterni
Jess Stearn