How 20th-century immigrants did not have to change their last names in order to become American.

More than 80% of early to mid-20th-century European, Middle Eastern, and Asian immigrants kept their last names, with only about 5% attempting to disguise foreign origins.

• Why it matters: Historical accounts often assume immigrants had to shed foreign identities to enter the American mainstream, but population-level evidence on last-name change patterns has been limited.
• What they did: Using Social Security Application records of parents’ names, the study quantifies surname changes and applies computational linguistic analysis to estimate whether changes preserved or concealed ethnic signals.
• The result: Jewish immigrants showed the highest rate of ethnicity-concealing changes, while Italian, Japanese, and Chinese immigrants had the lowest; the pattern suggests record linkage may be more feasible than expected.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.