Naturalized Name

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In the past, when a person moved to another country, it was common for that person to change their name to one that country would find "normal". While less common today, this was once very much Truth in Television. Still common in fiction that takes place in these time periods.

Examples of Naturalized Name include:

Comic Books

• Watchmen‍'‍s Sally Jupiter, from the Polish "Juspeczyk".

Film

• Slightly related - In the flashback sequences of The Godfather Part II, Vito Andolini from the town of Corleone is listed as Vito Corleone due to a mix-up at a hectic Ellis Island.
• Alien Nation. The Newcomers were given Earth names when they arrived. Some of the names were famous humans (Rudyard Kipling) and some were jokes (Sam Francisco).
• In the third Back to The Future movie, it's revealed that Doc Brown's father had their name naturalized from Von Braun because of the world war.

Literature

• In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently was actually born "Svlad Cjelli".

Video Games

• Bioshock‍'‍s Andrew Ryan from the Russian "Andrei Rianofski"
  • This is a reference to his Real Life inspiration, Ayn Rand, who was born Alisa Rosenbaum.

Western Animation

• In An American Tail, Fievel and Tanya are renamed Phillie and Tillie. Neither one takes, however.
• Played for laughs in The Simpsons episode "Bart-Mangled Banner". After relocating to France, the Simpsons become homesick and travel back to America. When Homer states their family name to an official, the man changes it to "Simps". To really drive the point home, they arrived in New York by boat and were dressed in nineteenth century European clothes.

Real Life

• When Arnold Schwarzenegger first started in Hollywood, the producers changed his name to Arnold Strong.
• In World War I the British Royal Family changed its collective surname from Saxe-Coburg Gotha to Windsor. When H. G. Wells complained about Britain's "alien and uninspiring court," George V is said to have replied, "I may be uninspiring, but I'll be damned if I'm alien!"
• Issur Danielovitch Demsky changed his name to Kirk Douglas.
• Isaac Asimov was born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov. The name change didn't help much.
• Sam Raimi's family changed their name from the German "Reingewertz".