Quote:
Originally Posted by LucyKKG
.....Who asks an entire culture to change their names? That's like when 19th C immigrants felt they had to change their names to assimilate...except in this case, an official asked them to do it. So backwards!!!....
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Actually it was still happening in the 20th century when immigrants were come over. Officials at Ellis Island forced them to. It wasn't a matter of "Do you want to change it?" My family didn't have to change their names which surprises me, but my mother did change hers to the American version of her original name. A friend of mine, who's family also came from Italy, were forced to change their last name. The original was Romano... for some reason they thought that was too Italian so they changed it to something that still sounded Italian. That's how a lot of families had different last names from each other.
Obviously America (in general) is more accepting of different cultures moreso now than they were back then so yes a comment about Asians changing their names is ridiculous.