[Greenperson]

One has to wonder where the original surname—Nidesand—came from. Suddenly, she’s Ruth Baker.

You know, that happens in most families doesn’t it? People’s names change. People have various aliases. Barry Soetoro. Barack Hussein Obama II. Steve Dunham. Ruth Nidesand. Ruth Baker. Shirley Ann Dunham. Anna Obama. Ann Dunham. Malik. Roy. Sadik. Bernard. Onyango. Omar.

[Fred Nerks]

TRANSLATE

Meant to do this ages ago, now you have reminded me. Seems that if the family was LATVIAN, and their name was BEIKER, they may have changed the spelling to BAKER.

Same goes for the YIDDISH, BIEKER. People from europe who changed their surnames usually retained a similarity to the original.

I think Nidesand came from Ndesandjo. It has a dutch-colonial ring to it, and there are Nidesands in South Africa, which made me wonder at one time, if Ruth may not have been a foreign student herself. What-ever and who-ever she is/was, her background seems to start with Sally Jacob's identification of her as Ruth (Beatrice) Baker:

Image supposedly from 1951.