Ellis Island

Ellis Island is a 27.5-acre site located just minutes off the southern tip of Manhattan Island, New York, and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the US National Park Service. It has been estimated that nearly half of all Americans today can trace their family history to at least one person who passed through the Port of New York at Ellis Island.
During the years of Ellis Island immigration from 1892-1924, there were more than twenty million individual stories that would eventually be shared with family and friends. Records and references to these millions of stories have been made available free of charge at http://www.ellisisland.org/ .

It has frequently been said that “They changed our name at Ellis Island" , but Donna Przecha disputes this and dispels some common myths about name changing at points of immigration in her article. Donna looks at how spelling really changed, - the clerks at Ellis Island didn't write down names. They worked from lists that were created by the shipping companies. What usually happened was the immigrant bought a ticket from an office near his home. So, the seller probably spoke the same language and transcribed the name correctly. In cases where the name was recorded incorrectly, it likely occurred in the old country, not at Ellis Island.
When immigrants arrived at Ellis Island, they were checked against the list. With all the immigrants coming through the facility, many translators were employed so language problems were rare. Name changes were often made by the immigrants themselves for a variety of reasons, that Donna discusses in her article.