[SamAdams76]

That would be an awkward name to use on stage.

It's common for entertainers with unwieldy names to change to simpler names for the stage. It has nothing to do with be ashamed of one's heritage.

For example, we have Delcan McManus (Elvis Costello and Steveland Judkins (Stevie Wonder).

None of those original names exactly roll off the tongue.

[Albion Wilde]

Also, minority kids got beat up in NYC public schools 90 years ago, when he would have started school. It was the thing then for immigrants to try to Americanize and assimilate, no matter their ethnicity. My old Italian friends wouldn't teach their kids their language, because they wanted them to be "Ameddicanni."

After the horrors of the holocaust had been laid bare by General Eisenhower at tge end of WWII, the many Jewish kids we grew up with in the 50s & 60s around the DC metro area went to Hebrew school after regular school and included their goyishe classmates in their Bar Mitzvahs, and we sang Hannukah songs along with the Christmas Carols at the December school show, and we all got along fine. Assimilation usually takes a couple of generations.

Amazed you found fault with assimilation, R2nd.