My name Russell goes waaaaay back....to about 1900 when the original Rusnock/Rusnack(sp) was Anglicized to Russell. LOL
As an aside, my maternal grandfather Jimmy Cypher worked in the accounting departments of some large mills in Western PA. Some had over 10,000 workers. Now, imagine the payroll dept. is made up mostly of English speaking Americans and there was this influx of Eastern and Southern European names onto the rolls. John Smith was not used to spelling Prezibilski or Malinconico. Also, in pre-computer days. everything was written by hand. Writing out these long foreign names on payroll cards was time consuming and error prone. Remember, everyone punched in at a time clock. This was a new card every week or two for each worker! So my grandfather as well as many other mill payroll masters, would have these folks legally change their names to shorter, more English sounding names. If you could change the names to Preston or Mellon, the time savings alone in writing the weekly pay cards and ledgers was amazing and less error prone. My Grandfather would actually fill out the papers for them, decide their new name and send them off to the court for the legal change. The implication was if they wanted paid, they better do what he asked. Though he never dismissed anyone for not doing it, some mills would terminate for non-compliance.
So if you have a last name more associated with the UK or Northern Europe, but your family history is not from there. Bingo! It may not have been that they wanted to fit in more as much as it was to get paid on time. Wink, wink.
