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