[Verginius Rufus]

I've looked at some of the Ellis Island records (both microfilm and online). There were handwritten ship manifests (toward the end they were typewritten). Some ships stopped several places before crossing the Atlantic and so the ship manifests were not all necessarily filled out by the same person. I found my grandfather's name there--misspelled (but in another column where it asked for a relative in the country of origin, it had his father's name spelled right).

Palermo is one of the places my grandfather's ship stopped at en route.

[svcw]

My husband’s grandfather’s name is spelled differently in every census from 1890 to 1940. The only reason we know its him is because he never moved.
It is a difficult Lithuanian name. The original spelling isn’t even close to what it became. Yet, if you go to the Lithuanian/Polish cemetery in Chicago the name that is not common in the US is loaded with people with his last name.
I guess they decide it was just easier to go with the simplified spelling.
The genealogy search can be fun.