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Don't forget about the immigration officers at Ellis Island who changed a lot of people's names! My maternal grandmother was Ignazia Tirrito. When her family came to the US in the early 1900's, some of them became Territos and some became Territas. Nobody in our current generations were ever sure which was correct. For family reunions, the newsletters/info packets were like this Territ@ to encompass both the 'a's and the 'o's. They changed her first name to Nancy. When the Ellis Island site came online, I was bound and determined to find their manifest, which became quite a challenge. My Uncle Salvatore had the same intent and also had a hard time finding my maternal grandmother's family on the site. He ended up in touch with someone from the Son's and Daughter's of Sicily out of Chicago and found out then that the correct spelling was Tirrito. We have since found a website that has all the surnames of everybody who lived in the small town in Sicily that they are from and confirmed this. On the Ellis Island site though, some of them are listed as Eirrito! They were tough to find. Similar things happened with my paternal grandfather's family. He went from Vincenzo to Jim at immigration. Some of his family is DiFranco, some are DeFranco. DiFranco is correct. It definitely makes the genealogy difficult. In following Italian tradition, the first born son is to be named after the paternal grandfather and the second born son is to be named after the maternal grandfather. So, I have a cousin Jim (named after my paternal grandfather) and my brother Vince (named after the SAME paternal grandfather).
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