1930s immigrants who Americanized their names earned more

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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. :)

"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.

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.

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

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.

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").

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

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.

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'.

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.

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.

When in Rome do as the Romans do.

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.

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.