[Verginius Rufus]

I don't know how many names got changed at Ellis Island. When passengers got on board, their names were entered on a list of passengers. When my grandfather came to America, his name was misspelled on that list but he didn't adopt the misspelling.

My grandparents were from a small village with only about 20 different surnames in use so even when the parish priest was from elsewhere he probably knew how to spell the names. But when my great-grandfather's brother died in a different village, his name was misspelled in the register of deaths.

[Tired of Taxes]

Within our family, most of the names might be spelled as they were spelled originally, but the ship records show some variations, and so do some birth, census, and death records. The problem seems to be that the Italian pronunciation for t sounded like d; and c like g; and so on.