When
immigrants entered
America in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they faced an immediate problem. As they were coming largely from
Germany,
Poland,
Russia and other countries in
Eastern Europe, their names were long and unfamiliar to the
English-speaking
inspectors. Names were
intentionally
shortened,
accidentally
misspelt and,
occasionally, completely
misunderstood. There are
records of
"Schultz" becoming
"Salt" and of the name
"Yankele" becoming
"John Kelly". Sometimes, immigrants elected to translate their names into English; an example is
"Schneider" becoming
"Tailor" (and often
"Taylor"), since that is the
German origin.
The story goes that there was a
Jewish immigrant who had decided to change his name on arrival in
America, a common practice at the time. With the
confusion of the moment, however, the immigrant
forgot his new name. When the inspector asked him for his name, the man panicked and
blurted out, in
Yiddish,
"Schon Vergessen!", which loosely means
"I've already forgotten it!". The
English-speaking inspector did not understand
Yiddish, but assumed that the man had given his answer.
The inspector entered the name in his records, and
promptly welcomed Sean Ferguson to America.
This story has been dismissed as apocryphal and there don't seem to be any records of the man actually existing; but it's a wonderful tale. Still, if you ever meet any Jewish Fergusons, you know exactly how they came about.