Salt Lake Tribune | 1919-09-20 | Page 6 | Much in a Name

MUCH IN A NAME. Since the outbreak of the great war, innumerable persons bearing names of Teutonic origin or of Teutonic sound have procured a change by judicial order. or-der. At the beginning of the conflict there was a great rush in En-gland to obtain legal "relief. " The defense-of defense-of the-realm act slopped aliens from doing so, but British subjects were still permitted to make changes, and they have done so in numbers and Rre still doing so. More than 2000 alterations of "enemy" surnames have taken place in Great Britain since 1,91 1. In America hundreds have Eought the aid of the courts to rid them of names which had become obnoxious.' In England the first surname changed after tho war broke out was that of a Liverpool man, who switched his Rosenheim to Rose, on August 11, 1914, and by the end of that month sixty-four sixty-four similar names were changed. The sinking of the Lusitania was followed by an increase in changes to 116 and 132 in May and June, 1915. After this the figures dropped until January, 1919, when the number rose to eighty, which has been the average figure for this year. A .list issued by the British Empire Union gives a number of the changes, and it. is not difficult to trace the different dif-ferent principles on which the changes have been .'effected. In many cases i there have been direct translations, 'sucli .as 'Koenig into King, Muller into Miller, Sohloss info Castle and Seheid-ner Seheid-ner into. Taylor. Sometimes the translation trans-lation .has been indirect, such as Stcin-thal Stcin-thal into Petrie, through "petros, " tho Greek word for Stone, and Leinen-weber Leinen-weber into 'Webster, which is the Scots for weaver. An extremely popular form of change has been the adoption of the initial letter, especially Gee, Kay and Kayo, for unpronounceable polysyllables. Thus, Mr. Gunzenhauser may have been known by his friends for years as Mr, Gee, and Mr. Kror.enberger as Mr. Kay. In other cases the first syllable has been adopted, such as Hittbrecht into Hi tt or Hill, or it has been the last syllable, such as Hausmann into Mann. In the process of change, a great many famous Teutonic names have been discarded both in England and America. Amer-ica. Notable among the so may be mentioned those of Bach, Handel, Hin-denburg, Hin-denburg, Koch, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann and Wagner. A curious aspect as-pect of the matter is found in the fact that different members of the same family, living sometimes in tho 6ame house, have changed their names nt different joriods of tho war. Still more curious is the change of the samo name by persons of -the same address into different names. In ono caso a Mr. Meissonhnim became Mason and his brother became Homer.