I’m guessing it happened around the time WW2 started – there’s a similar story in my family – a distant cousin of mine was born in England to Polish-Jewish immigrants, and his father changed their family name from Haltrecht (my grandfather’s name too) to Hall because he believed it would protect them once the Nazis invade Britain.Heksagon wrote:Moody was born Ronald Moodnick in Tottenham, north London, on 8 January 1924, the son of Jewish immigrants. His father anglicised the family name to Moody several years later.
And now, a cinematic twist. I recently met this architectural model maker whose surname is the extremely non Jewish/Hebrew Darnell. I told him the only other person I know of who had this name was an obscure Hollywood starlet he’s probably never heard of, Linda Darnell. His face lit up and he said I was the first person ever to be aware of this connection – as it turned out, his father was in the British army during the war, and his unit was captured by the Germans, and since he had a very distinctively Jewish name, and since this name had the initial D, he altered it for that of his favorite movie star, and since he believed it had saved his life, he officially adopted it after the war. It turned out that other than the fact she was very beautiful, this guy knew nothing about the original Darnell, so I told him a bit about her, meaning, of course, her horrible demise. It seemed like, emotionally, he was informed about something sad which happened to one of his ancestors, which, in a strange way, I guess she somehow was.