This motive constantly appears among the Jews, who face an
anti-Semitism that is imperfectly concealed and may be expected
to grow stronger hereafter. Once they have lost the faith of
their fathers, a phenomenon almost inevitable in the first native-
born generation, they shrink from all the disadvantages that go
with Jewishness, and seek to conceal their origin, or, at all
events, to avoid making it unnecessarily noticeable. [1] To this
end they modify the spelling of the more familiar Jewish sur-
names, turning Levy into Lewy, Lewyt, Levitt, Levin, Levine,
Levey, Levie [2] and even Lever, Cohen into Cohn, Cahn, Kahn,
Kann, Coyne and Conn, Aarons into Arens and Ahrens and
Solomon into Salmon, Salomon and Solmson. In the same way
they shorten their long names, changing Wolfsheimer to Wolf,
Goldschmidt to Gold, and Rosenblatt, Rosenthal, Rosenbaum, Ro-
senau, Rosenberg, Roseribusch, Rosenblum, Rosenstein, Rosen-
heim and Rosenfeldt to Rose. Like the Germans, they also seek
refuge in translations more or less literal. Thus, on the East
Side of New York, Blumenthal is often changed to Blooming dale,
Schneider to Taylor, Reichman to Richman, and Schlachtfeld to
War field. Fiddler, a common Jewish name, becomes Harper;
so does Pikler, which is Yiddish for drummer. Stolar, which is
a Yiddish word borrowed from the Russian, signifying carpen-
ter, is often changed to Carpenter. Lichtman and Lichtenstein
become Chandler. Meilach, which is Hebrew for king, becomes
King, and so does Meilachson. The strong tendency to seek
English-sounding equivalents for names of noticeably foreign
origin changes Sher into Sherman, Michel into Mitchell, Ro-
gowsky into Rogers, Kolinsky into Collins, Rabinovitch into Rob-
bins, Davidovitch into Davis, Moiseyev into Macy or Mason, and
Jacobson, Jacobovitch and Jacobovsky into Jackson. This last
25 Cf. The Jews, by Maurice Fishberg; New York, 1911, ch. xxii, and espe-
cially p. 485 et seq.
26 The English Jews usually change Levy to Lewis, a substitution almost
unknown in America. They also change A braham to Braham and Moses
to Moss. Vide Surnames, Their Origin and Nationality, by L. B. McKenna;
Quincy (111.), 1913, pp. 13-14.
Page:The American Language.djvu/296
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THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE