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

