1930s immigrants who Americanized their names earned more

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/03/names-and-wages

by feelthepain • 12 years ago

83 102 12 years ago

And sometimes "Americanized" means "the guy at the immigration counter didn't know how to spell their name so he put the closest thing there"

If you knew how to spell Matthäus, good, otherwise it was Matthew

"Over half of Russian migrants Americanised their names; only 4% of Irish migrants did so."

Not surprising, and I would bet the 4% consisted of Siobhans, Padraigs, etc

TillE• 12 years ago

Siobhan

I'm not sure how you could possibly anglicize that, short of adopting an entirely new name. "Sean" would be phonetically close, but Siobhan is exclusively feminine.

raverbashing3• 12 years ago

Yes, I know it is feminine, but my mental list of Irish name is short

DavidWoof• 12 years ago

Sharon

herge• 12 years ago

How 'bout Joanne?

dghf• 12 years ago

As "Joan", "Joanna" or "Jane", presumably.

Slightly off-topic: I can't find a link, but I'm sure I read somewhere that Irish speakers in the nineteenth century would routinely anglicise their own names when writing in English: e.g., a man called Sean would sign letters as "John".

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

It's usually anglicized as Shivon.

pessimizer• 12 years ago

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Chevonne

pbhjpbhj2• 12 years ago

Anglicise, surely ;0)>

"Shavaun" ~10 per million in US census name information. "Shavaughn" seems similarly [un]popular too.

Also, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Amusing-Misspellings-of-Siobh....

chiph2• 12 years ago

Actually, the "Americanized" names were mostly picked by the crew on board the steamship line (Cunard, White Star, Holland America, etc). The immigration inspectors just worked from the provided passenger lists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island#Records

raverbashing3• 12 years ago

Interesting

It even mentions: " However, many last names were altered slightly due to the disparity between English and other languages in the pronunciation of certain letters of the alphabet"

Unfortunately their source [34] is a link that does not exist anymore at that URL

fabriceleal• 12 years ago

Not sure if it counts as an americanized name, but this reminded me of Godfather 2; in Ellis Island, Vito Andolini from Corleone was "rebaptized" as Vito Corleone.

jpmattia• 12 years ago

It's worth noting: The passenger lists from Ellis Island are now online. http://www.ellisisland.org/search/index.asp

Amezarak• 12 years ago

Wow, that's interesting. I wonder if there was something similar going on prior to American independence? My ancestors immigrated to the US in the early 1700s. For some inexplicable reason that no one has been able to figure out, they changed their surname from a Germanic-sounding one to (apparently) totally unrelated nonsense (an unfortunate side effect is that every living family member can be uniquely identified in the world by first plus last name.) If it was some kind of passenger list screwup, that'd make some sense.

rwhitman• 12 years ago

I've been suspicious that the "changed at Ellis Island" story may be more of an urban legend. My family was always told that was the case, and then we found records proving my great grandparents changed their name years after migrating to the US, and for some reason they had hid that information from my grand father his entire life. My theory is that it was a point of shame having lost the family name, so they chalked it up to lazy immigration people.

thaumasiotes3• 12 years ago

My family lore says that a Russian ancestor's name was mangled in immigration, and while he hadn't expected it he was pleased at having a different name. Doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to think that if he was pleased to get a new name he might have been willing to take the credit for changing it himself, but I've seen no documents either way.

aestra4• 12 years ago

In the history of my last name:

We found records of the origins of my family in the US. Their name was not changed at first, except 10 years later the first letter "I" got inexplicably changed to a "J." Considering how close a capital I can look to a capital J when written hastily, I gotta believe it was a clerical error.

dethstar2• 12 years ago

Just to add a little from my experience: I went to study English to Canada about 4 years ago (I'm Mexican) most of my Asian class mates would choose to be called James, Michael, Sophie and what not instead of their actual name exactly for that reason.

kalleboo• 12 years ago

It's common for Chinese to choose an "english name" when they study english even back in China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3U5u3D2L9Q

thaumasiotes3• 12 years ago

Asian -- what kind? It's extremely common for Chinese to choose english names independently of their "true" names; the Japanese people I know don't do that.

RK• 12 years ago

Many Irish already had their names Anglicized by the English before they left Ireland.

JamilD• 12 years ago

Back in the 90s, my uncle couldn't find a job as a software engineer in Texas - he wouldn't even get an interview, despite having graduated from a top-tier American university.

After changing his first name on his resume from a very Muslim-sounding name to an "Americanized" one, that changed completely.

Things are changing now, but I wouldn't be surprised if this bias is, at least to some extent, still evident.

mikeash• 12 years ago

I wonder if it might become standard to leave your name off a resume, only giving anonymized contact info and such, similar to how it's standard (in the US, anyway) not to include a photograph in order to avoid charges of discrimination.

acomjean• 12 years ago

I totally believe this.

I'm american, but my name is "Aram". This is not a common American name (Its more common in Armenia, and my dad is half Armenian). Im pretty much a European mutt.

People try to figure out who you are by your name. When I moved from Mass to NY for work and was meeting people I had worked with and talked to on the phone (who speak freely), I got three times "You don't look like an Aram". I asked someone what they thought Aram looks like, I was told more middle-eastern.

When I do a job search, I wonder if changing my name would make it easier. Being in tech helps though, people are used to odd names.

thaumasiotes3• 12 years ago

It doesn't seem so weird to expect an Armenian to look middle-eastern?

steveklabnik• 12 years ago

There are tons of studies that show this effect. It's still very muh alive and well today. Here's the first one I found this morning: http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf

"The results of this study indicate a gender bias for both men and women in preference for male job applicants."

pwnna• 12 years ago

Is this possible to A/B test?

stonemetal• 12 years ago

Maybe not A/B but researchers have sent out identical resumes with different names on them to see who gets called.

http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/spring03/racialbias.htm...

cottonseed4• 12 years ago

I had the idea for a "blind" job search/interview site that cleans applications of race, age and gender information. I'm not going to build it, but I think it would be great.

theorique5• 12 years ago

It's a cool idea, but how do you head off the inevitable reveal of that information face-to-face? Or is it only for the earlier rounds (resume selection, etc).

elwell2• 12 years ago

My white male neighbor made a version of his resume with a different name to appear as an african-american female and got many more responses for his education/childcare related applications.

yesiamyourdad• 12 years ago

I used to live in TX and a guy I worked for had a story about when he was growing up there was a family who emigrated from Eastern Europe to his down in South TX. They decided to start over with a good American name. So they changed their name to Gonzales.

dctoedt• 12 years ago

So they changed their name to Gonzales.

In the 1960s there was a joke in Readers' Digest about how Teddy Kennedy wanted to change his name because he was tired of being pigeonholed as Jack's and Bobby's little brother. So the judge asks him, "what do you want it changed to?" The senator replies, "Roosevelt."

silencio• 12 years ago

I don't think I have a problem getting interviews, but random little biases similar to that is why I eventually decided to change my last name to my husband-as-of-Saturday's last name. I also happen to like that last name, but...

It was rather surprising to me when I realized the number of people telling me I shouldn't be pressured into changing my name was equal to the number of asian/minority women that changed names giving me not so subtle hints about what they've experienced. It frustrates me a little. But I have friends from all walks of life and everyone from the minimum-wage-job-paying-off-student-loans friends to doctors and lawyers were all telling me variations on the same story from all different settings. They went from sounding like a minority like I did and just getting whatever treatment they thought everyone else got (i.e. it wasn't explicitly racist, it was just...average), to sudden interest and respect that lasts even after people realize what race they are.

I do find it sad the other "married" privilege I'm laughing at is that I could be wearing literally anything even a crappy tshirt and yoga pants sweaty after a workout at the gym, and people will treat me differently based on whether or not I'm wearing my ring that has a 1ct stone. Especially when I frequent a store and the same cashier or owner still doesn't remember me but treats me like night and day based on it every. single. time. The effect is even better than walking up to someone to buy lots of things and they're a bit snobby like "you can't possibly want this or pay for it" until I pull out a platinum amex or a wad of 100s from my wallet.

This is (among other reasons) why I try so hard not to make buttloads of assumptions and pass instant judgment on others - I don't like being on the receiving end, and we're all guilty of being on the giving end too many times.

ido• 12 years ago

Interesting. I wonder what people think of my name (a very strange and unusual name for Germany). I was once aske if it's Finnish which I guess doesn't really carry much negative stereotypes (if any, I think people generally don't think much at all about Finland).

Job wise my resume contains my birthplace and university education (which is from a "safe" first world country people usually think of a "white" - Israel) so if anything it must help (being seen as Jewish in Germany is usually more likely to get one "corrective" positive discrimination for obvious reasons).

Of course we can never know for sure which interviews we didn't get due to stereotypes so who knows.

But I'm sure I'd have gotten worse treatment if my name was obviously Muslim or African sounding.

tomrod2• 12 years ago

Small issue with the studywriteup: the emigration pool from each country was not homogenous. Unless the authors addressed that within the study I'm hesitant to believe the outcomes. The outcome is wages-from-occupation, which occupational skills may have been the impetus for moving from a home country.

azernik2• 12 years ago

From the writeup:

There is also the problem of reverse causality. It is quite possible that richer migrants were more inclined to Americanise their name. (They might, for example, live in a richer area with fewer migrants, which might incentivise them to change their name to fit in). So, to establish a causal link from name-changing to wage-boosting—and here’s my favourite part of the paper—the authors turn to Scrabble. They calculate the Scrabble score for the name of each arriving migrant (the score of all the letters in the name) and show that individuals who decided to Americanise had higher Scrabble points. That finding soothes worries about reverse causality: it suggests that it was not the wealthier people that changed their names, but those with unusual names.

tomrod2• 12 years ago

I hate it when I miss valid points in my sklm :). That's a perfectly reasonable concern and an innovative bias-correction strategy.

It still misses the homogeneous point though: Russia might have a lot of doctors emigrating for higher wages, whereas Italy might have had people fleeing as refugees. We'd expect higher skilled workers with hard names to adjust their hard-to-pronounce-and-therefore-hard-to-sell-services names.

gwern• 12 years ago

When I saw the headline, that's not even the reverse causality story that jumped into my mind; I thought instead, 'adopting an American name proxies for willingness to assimilate and abandon the Old Country and hence naturally predicts increased success' (similar to the 'black' name studies). Their Scrabble/unusualness metric fits this story just as well the obvious discrimination story.

kingmanaz• 12 years ago

When in Rome do as the Romans do.

xplorer• 12 years ago

That's actually what happens in Canada. In Quebec even if you're a native French speaker ( the official language in Quebec ) but you happen to have a Muslim name or a Chinese name you will suffer from discrimination... And this is a fact... it's sometimes hidden behind an excuse that the person didn't meet the criteria or didn't have enough experience.

In Quebec if you don't have an American name or a French name they might not read your resume.

guylhem• 12 years ago

Indeed, and to make things better, Quebec won't allow legal name change in most cases.

Step 1) leave Quebec

Step 2) change your name in the other provice

Step 3) ... (return to Quebec, or wherever)

Step 4) Profit!

Source: I live there.

drdeadringer• 12 years ago

Asimov's short "Spell my name with an 'S'" addresses this. The title says it all.

More recently, I've one or two articles regarding engineers having to add "Mister" to their resume with dishearteningly profitable results.

kievins• 12 years ago

This reminded me of Commodore founder Jack Tramiel who originally was called Jacek Trzmiel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Tramiel

bluedino• 12 years ago

This happens today in the US, especially with African-Americans with 'unique' names.

'Charles Taylor' is going to get more callbacks than his sister 'LaQuashandreka Taylor'.

disputin2• 12 years ago

Eastern Europeans in London do this. Andrzej becomes Andrew, Wojciech becomes Voytek, names beginning with Sz drop the z. People working in coffee shops often change their name after working there a while.

theorique5• 12 years ago

change their name after working there a while

The 300th time you have to say "spelled XYZABC", or the 300th time someone says "I'm sorry, what?" when you tell them your name, people tend to reach their breaking point.

mladenkovacevic• 12 years ago

I literally get this all the time... having to spell it out.. people asking me "did you say your name was Alladin? Is that like Bin Laden?"

I don't think I'd ever be able to change it though and tell a whole whack of people I meet to just call me Ben or something. It's too much a part of my identity.

disputin2• 12 years ago

No doubt. Although in coffee shops they wear name badges and don't have much reason to tell people their names.

cowpewter• 12 years ago

My last name is Richard. My father and his mom pronounced it Ree-shard (it's of French origin, I think?). My parents divorced when I was just a baby, and I grew up pronouncing it like the male first name.

I asked my mom once why we pronounced it differently and she told me that nearly every time she had to give her name for something, the person would ask her, "Wait, how is that spelled?" and after she'd spell it, they'd reply, "Ohhhh, Richard[said like the first name]." After a couple years of this she just gave up and started giving her name that way up-front because it was faster.

harmonicon• 12 years ago

So does this mean I should change my first name? My first name is one syllable and it does not involve anything like tongue clicking or rolling. But many people still find it hard to say. Name starts with a J and end with N and I think people sabotage themselves by always trying to fit a "John" in there.

chimeracoder2• 12 years ago

This doesn't surprise me at all.

Even if the effect described in the article is not conscious ("let me pay this person less, since he's a foreigner[0]"), I have no trouble seeing how it could happen (unconsciously), based on my own personal experiences.

My first name is very difficult for Americans to pronounce because (A) it is not phonetic; and (B) even a phonetic spelling would include sounds not common in English.

My last name is actually an Anglicisation of the original family name, so it's entirely phonetic. Even still people have trouble saying it. That one confuses me to this day.

The impact on my life of having a tough-to-pronounce name is usually subtle, but it's noticeable in minor ways. I can imagine that these would add up in the long run (perhaps not for every individual, but in the aggregate).

[0] That said, let's not discount the impact of being able to identify a person's race by his/her name (the original Freakonomics book goes into this a lot). I have a friend who has a very obviously Chinese name, and he started putting "US Citizen" at the top of his resume, because so many people thought that he needed visa sponsorship, even though he was born in the US.

Another friend of mine is white, but his surname also happens to be very common for Koreans. He's had a few funny interactions where he walked into an interview and the person was momentarily surprised to see a blonde, white man instead of an Asian interviewee.

nickff2• 12 years ago

Is it not also possible that the people with Anglicized names are a self-selecting group with high emotional intelligence quotients, or who possess generally above-average self-awareness? Both of these traits are indicative of career success, and make one more likely to change their name.[1]

[1] http://www.eiconsortium.org/reports/business_case_for_ei.htm...

chimeracoder2• 12 years ago

There are a number of reasons I'd question this line of reasoning, but the biggest one is that many of us did not have a choice - our names were changed without our consent.

levosmetalo• 12 years ago

Even if that is true that doesn't contradict the conclusion that having anglicized name helps to earn more. They are inteligent, and they realized the fact their US collegues earn more just because of name, so they changed the name, leaving the gap even bigger for ones that kept up with their original name.

codfrantic• 12 years ago

On your unusual first name:

Jimmy Carr:

"I got talking to a girl in the front row; I asked her her name. She said, 'It's Pataka.' I said, 'That's an unusual name. You don't hear that every day.' To which she replied, 'Actually, I do.' "

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/0miodh/comedy-central-presents...

Joke starts around 1:50.

jimbobimbo• 12 years ago

Whenever people ask me how I pronounce my last name, I answer "I don't".

Even my compatriots have problems spelling it properly; in US I had my credit card re-issued three times due to misspellings and Amex doesn't allow as much characters on their card, so I mix my Americanized first name with an original last name. The only benefit of keeping it as is in US is when someone tries to call you in the crowd - "Mr. erhm... ugh... hmmm..." - is usually me. :)

allochthon• 12 years ago

The article deals with immigrants to the US trying to fit in the 1930s, a time when great pressure was brought to bear on people to conform to a narrow, archetypal notion of Americanness, and appreciation of diversity was far from people's minds. I'm hoping that in 2014 incremental progress is being made in a direction in which there will be less and less pressure to change one's name to fit in and advance economically.

jmnicolas• 12 years ago

Or they earned more because changing their name might be a sign of strong motivation to fit-in and succeed.

MasterScrat• 12 years ago

I read it a long time ago, but wasn't it the final conclusion of the Freakonomics study?

drglitch• 12 years ago

It would be interesting to run the same study with immigrants (or children of immigrants) who are currently 20-30 years old.

As an immigrant myself, i would argue that those who have little existing financial foundation AND the desire to succeed - which is evident by act of immigrating - tend to be more successful overall.

beachstartup• 12 years ago

i'm asian american (born and raised here in the us) but have completely anglo-sounding common first and last names.

i can say that i've never been discriminated against in a professional/work context, ever, and i think that has a LOT to do with it. probably all to do with it.

a lot of people think i was adopted. lol.

ilovecookies• 12 years ago

Quick note: This was during the great depression, a period where more people emigrated from the united states than into the country which kind of puts this in perspective.

I think the reason for this was also that most of the immigrants back then came from German speaking countries or countries affected by war, and since they didn't want to get associated with the former governments in Europe and first and second world war. Apparently they also earned more money with american sounding names which was even more of an incentive to change their names.

voidlogic• 12 years ago

"Over half of Russian migrants Americanised their names; only 4% of Irish migrants did so."

Americanised, or Anglicized?

I have a feeling this variation by nationality extends well beyond Russian/Irish divide, where I live many people are of German decent (42%, next closest is Irish at 11%)and German family names are the most common. When I bought my house I noticed every party involved had a German last name and that made me take more notice in general.

Lambdanaut• 12 years ago

It could also be that people that are more driven to work together and co-exist in their new country are more likely to change their names.

It could be that they have better wages because they're better at group cooperation.

wink• 12 years ago

Immediately reminded me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Tail - although a children's movie even back then it striked me as odd that names were Americanized.

gruseom2• 12 years ago

A friend of mine has the last name Miiller—i.e. "Miller" with a ludicrous extra "i". This is because when his ancestors named Müller came over, someone didn't recognize "ü" and wrote down "ii".

He's very proud of it, several generations later.

dllthomas2• 12 years ago

To be fair, the difference between ü and ii in cursive is tiny.

dublinben• 12 years ago

The name "miiller" actually seems pretty common. Your friend is far from the only person from a family (presumably descended from Müllers) with that spelling. Curiously, how do they pronounce it?

gruseom2• 12 years ago

You're right. "Common" means something so different than it used to pre-internet. I'm reminded of that every time I google something I think is special.

Edit (missed your other question): He pronounces it "Miller".

korzun• 12 years ago

They earned more because they obviously knew how to get ahead. Not because of their 'American' name.

EliRivers• 12 years ago

Even today, 'American' names on a job application generate more response than non-American. They do know how to get ahead; Americanize your name.

protomyth2• 12 years ago

Some changed their name to make a clean start. I had a buddy in college whose great-grandfather changed his name from Yeager to something very "Americanish".

Also, the hate for various groups (Irish for one) was pretty heavy with signs (e.g. "No Irish Allowed").

aestra4• 12 years ago

(Irish for one) was pretty heavy with signs (e.g. "No Irish Allowed").

It is a myth that such signs were ever common.

http://historymyths.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/myth-82-signs-s...

http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm

http://www.cracked.com/article_18487_6-ridiculous-history-my...

protomyth2• 12 years ago

Since all you sources point to one article by a "Richard Jensen", I'll just point to the snopes thread[1] and the wikipedia article[2] with the other research. The picture from the New York Times wanted ads is particularly interesting.

I do take it we have forgotten about the "No Nothing Party".

1) http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_to...

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment

rodelrod• 12 years ago

This is slightly off-topic, but I think many of the comments on this thread would be enlightened by a little reminder: proper names were always translated whenever you crossed a language border well into the 20th century. Eleanor of Aquitaine was "Aliénor" in Bordeaux and "Eléonore" in Paris. Only with the gradual bureaucratisation of daily life in Europe did this start to change. In some conservative cultural settings, it still holds true: even today Prince Charles is called "Carlos" in Spain or Portugal. Living in France, I much rather have people pronounce the French variant of my name, purely because it flows better and even sounds closer to the native version than their attempts at reading a foreign ortograph. I am always surprised with how punctilious people from the Americas are with the about spellings and variants of their names, although I understand where they're coming from. In my head, John and Giovanni are still the same name, and any made up variants are just misspellings.

cwbrandsma• 12 years ago

When my mom's family immigrated in the 50's from The Netherlands, all of the kids were provided with new names. So my mom went from Antje to Ann, Dinnika to Diana, Greitje to Grace, etc.

So they all learned english, all speak like native speakers, and gave their children English names.

But those kids are now resurrecting the old dutch names. So, these Dutch immigrants, with english names, and english named children, have grandchildren with Dutch names...Willem, Berendt, Jannika, etc.

Sometimes things go full circle.

1930s immigrants who Americanized their names earned more

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