Inter alia, Judith Romney Wegner wrote:

<Actually it is *not* true that Hyman is the English equivalent of
Tsvi. (I wonder what gave you that idea?) Hyman is merely the usual
anglicization of the name Chaim or Hayyim.>

I am sure she is correct but I wonder about her use of
**anglicization**? My father's family is said to have arrived in Britain
just before my father was born in 1888. There is a family legend that
his mother was pregnant with him on the journey. Whatever the truth of
that there is no doubt that my father was born very soon after they
arrived. His birth certificate gives his father's name as Hyman: it was
certainly Chaim in Hebrew. They would have had no chance to learn much
English before the birth if that process is what is meant by
anglicization. I notice that the copy of the birth certificate has an X
for father's signature (perhaps he wrote it in Yiddish? It suggests
illiteracy in English.) The birth certificate gets the family name wrong
and also the mother's maiden name wrong, no doubt the registrar
mishearing those words. Could he also have misheard Chaim and written
down Hyman? On the other hand his occupation was correctly given -
**Cabinet Maker (journeyman)**. However, perhaps my grandfather knew
those words >from his membership of the Hebrew Cabinet Makers' Union of
which he was a member and may have joined soon after his arrival.
Another possible illustration of their lack of knowledge of English was
the fact that when the two oldest children, my aunts, who had been born
in Slonim, Grodno, started school in Stepney there was some confusion
and they were registered not with the surname Polonsky but with Hyman.