After marrying Alice Snow Barbee of High Point, North Carolina, whom he was quoted calling “the only luxury of my life I do not share,” Georges Lurcy changed his surname from “Levy,” a Jewish last name sometimes referring to Levite descent, to “Lurcy,” which sounded more American. Many Jewish immigrants changed their last names after immigrating to the United States for one reason or another. For some, it was a way to avoid standing out. For others, a way to protect themselves against antisemitism. Jews who came through Ellis Island often had their names changed or shortened when immigration officials could not spell or pronounce their Jewish surnames. A section in The Elegant Auctioneer sheds some light onto Georges Lurcy’s name change:
“Soon he had decided that of Levys there were too many; thenceforth he would call himself Lurcy. He was not afraid of being a Jew, buy why not protect himself and his wife? It was a practical thing to do” (The Elegant Auctioneer, 582).
For Georges Lurcy, changing his last name seems to have had two main purposes: a new identity and protection. In our project, we examine the ways in which Georges Lurcy’s decisions helped him both blend in and stand out. His decision to change his last name not only protected him against potential antisemitic prejudices from others, but also helped him stand out, as “of Levys there were too many.” Lurcy was a less common name that would help him create a new identity for himself and his wife, while also potentially gaining them more prosperity and success.
In the paper “Cultural Assimilation During the Age of Mass Immigration” by Ran Abramitzky et. al., the authors write about the social and economic benefits of having a less “foreign sounding” last name.
“Having an American-sounding name was a marker of assimilation that may have conferred economic and social benefits. We examined the census records of over 800,000 children of immigrants, observed both in 1920, when they lived with their childhood families, and in 1940 as adults. Indeed, children with less-foreign-sounding names completed more years of schooling, earned more, and were less likely to be unemployed than their counterparts with more foreign-sounding names” (Abramitzky et. al., 3).
For Georges Lurcy and many other Jews, changing their last name was a way to improve their social and economic status for both themselves and future generations.
This was a particularly popular strategy between 1917 and 1942 in New York City, as explained by Kirsten Fermaglich in her paper “’Too Long, Too Foreign… Too Jewish’: Jews, Name Changing, and Family mobility in New York City, 1917-1942.” Fermaglich writes about a Jewish man in 1932, Max Greenberger, who petitioned the City Court of the City of New York to change his and his children’s last name to “Greene.” In his petition, he explained that “[t]he name Greenberger is a foreign sounding name and is not conducive to securing good employment as a musician” (Journal of American Ethnic History, 34).
Fermaglich writes that “name changing was emerging as a significant Jewish strategy for upward mobility in New York City during the years between World War I and World War II,” a strategy that was also employed by none other than Georges Lurcy himself. Lurcy’s name change not only helped him gain economic and social success, but also fit into a clear ongoing trend of name changing in the American Jewish world.
Sources:
Abramitzky, Ran and Boustan, Leah Platt and Eriksson, Katherine, “Cultural Assimilation During the Age of Mass Migration” (July 2016). NBER Working Paper No. w22381, https://www.nber.org/papers/w22381
Fermaglich, Kirsten. “‘Too Long, Too Foreign … Too Jewish’: Jews, Name Changing, and Family Mobility in New York City, 1917-1942.” Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 34, no. 3, 2015, pp. 34–57. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jamerethnhist.34.3.0034.