This is my answer to Bob Bloomberg.  I think Mary&David had the same
problem I had; at least their message contains nothing but a repeat of
the Bloomberg message.  His stars must have aligned...

Jules Levin

All the photos of arriving immigrants to Ellis Island show them with
name tags. (By the way, my greatgrandmother travelled cabin-class with
parents and siblings, and such arrivals did not have to go thru the
process at all--there must have been separate manifests for steerage
.)    I can imagine language difficulties with   immigrants with speech
impediments, but hardly language difficulties with the languages spoken
by Jewish immigrants.   You keep throwing in that red herring--all
it        does is lower your credibility.  What is your problem?  Do you
not want to face that many young assimilating immigrants were
embarrassed by their too Jewish names?  My theory:  if you were to
divide all Jewish immigrants into those whose 2nd generation remained
Orthodox in America, and those who "americanized", you would find the
latter strongly correlated with name changing.  Certainly true in my
family.