The Starbucks barista calls out “Joe, grande latte for Joe!” It takes him two tries before I remember I’m Joe and go pick up my coffee. A minor episode in the long history of non-Anglo immigrants changing their names after moving to America.

If your family immigrated to the United States in the 19^th century and/or you took middle-school social studies in the States, you’ve probably heard that officials at Ellis Island often changed newcomers’ names, either because they couldn’t spell them or because they wanted to make them sound more American. In fact, authorities in New York never actually wrote down anyone’s name, they just checked each immigrant against the ship’s passenger list, which would have been compiled by employees of the steamship companies. That means that your grandpa Szymańczyk turned into Simmons before he even set foot on the boat. My case, though, is less about forced reinvention than about bureaucratic drift. Names are bearers of our identity, history, and culture, but a lot can happen when they are run through the machinery of another culture’s bureaucracy.

Read the rest of the essay on Slate