The following is a note I sent to Gary Mokotoff whic may be of interest
generally.

From: "theentins" <theentins@...>
To: <mokotoff@...>
Subject: Re: Nu? What's New? - Vol. 2, No. 8 - Special Edition -- Ellis
Island Database
Date: Sunday, April 22, 2001 2:15 PM

Gary,

The Ellis Island database was entered by way of "digitazing".
That is why you have so much trouble with your name. The same has happened
to me with surnames, places etc. Preni (the name written in the passenger
manifest for Prienai, Lithuania) came out as Preny because the digitazer saw
the "i" as a "y". The same has also happened with names ( not only
Jewish-Eastern European names but, as with my wife's family with Portuguese
also). Given names are recognized by the digitizer as anything but what they
really are. In fact some of them make no sense at all and aren't even real
names. I am sure that we all have many other family members in the Ellis
Island database that we will never find because we cannot dream up the
spelling of the name under which they may be entered.

You are correct. The Ellis Island people should have used the Dutch-Mokotoff
soundex system.

Regards,

Jeff Entin
Fall River, MA

ENTIN, Minsk, Belarus; BERLYAVSKY, Pereyaslav and Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine;
PERCIKOVICH (HORVITZ), Butrimonys, Lithuania; BUBELSKY, Prienai, Lithuania;
LEVIN, Vilnius, Lithuania; SCHILANSKY, Mariampole and Siauliai, Lithuania;
LIPSCHITZ, Kaunas and Vilnius, Lithuania; UCHEVITZ, Vilnius, Lithuania,
KABATCHNICK , Lithuania; FALK, Lithuania