An Ellis Island Special is a family name that is perceived or labeled, incorrectly, as having been altered or

anglicized Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by English culture or British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English becomes English. It can also refer to the influenc ...

by immigration officials at the

Ellis Island Ellis Island is a federally owned island in New York Harbor, situated within the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey, that was the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the United States. From 1892 to 1954, nearly 12 mil ...

immigration station when a family reached the United States, typically from Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In popular thought, some family lore, and literary fiction, some family names have been perceived as having been shortened by immigration officials for ease of pronunciation or record-keeping, or lack of understanding of the true name—even though name changes were made by the immigrants themselves at other times. Among the family names that are perceived as being Ellis Island Specials are some that were supposedly more identifiably

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

, resulting in last names that were not identifiably so. Also, Germanic- and Yiddish-derived names originally spelled with an Eszett (spoken with an ''s'' sound but written ß) have been ascribed to family names like ''Straub'' (given the similarity with the letter ''B''), which might have been said originally as ''Strauss'' in the Old World. The phrase "Ellis Island Special" has also been adopted by some food vendors and applied to sandwiches, among other foods.

References

Ellis Island History of immigration to the United States Jews and Judaism in New York City {{Jewish-hist-stub