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A Schmutz for a Sanders

Commemorating great name-changes

by
Marc Tracy
August 26, 2010

All in all, it is probably a positive sign that immigrants to America no longer feel the need or desire to change their surnames to more “American” (re: Anglo, or at least intelligible-to-English) variants. At the same time, one can’t help but feel that something is being lost, particularly in the Jewish community. To that end, I polled a few Tablet Magazine staffers to find out their original last names from way, way back. Don’t forget to leave yours in the comments!

Fishbeyn –> Matthew Fishbane, deputy politics editor

Hoffmann –> Allison Hoffman, senior writer

Urich* –> Wayne Hoffman, deputy editor of Nextbook Press

Ivry –> Sara Ivry (ivrit, anyone?), senior editor

Mueller –> Abigail Miller, assistant art director/Webmaster

Neuhaus –> Alana Newhouse, editor-in-chief

Oxfeld –> Jesse Oxfeld, executive editor (okay so not everyone had name-changes)

Schmutz (!) –> Gabe Sanders, deputy editor

Smallwood –> Len Small, art director/Webmaster

Zubrine/Rosenfeld** –> Julie Subrin, audio producer

Tracovutski –> Marc Tracy, staff writer

* “Apparently some other family in Russia named Hoffman had visas to emigrate, and their visas came in before my family’s (Urich) did. But when their visa came up, one of the Hoffman children was ill and they’d have been turned away from the boat. They told the Urichs that they could use the Hoffman visa—all they had to do was switch family names. Simple. We’ve been Hoffman ever since.”

**There is apparently much controversy on the subject!

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.