From “One Fish, Two Fish” to One Family, Two Names: Dr. Seuss Day and the Genealogy of Name Changes

From One Fish Two Fish to One Family, Two Names: Dr. Seuss Day and the Genealogy of Name Changes

From One Fish Two Fish: March 2nd is Dr. Seuss Day—and it’s the perfect excuse to dig into your immigrant ancestors who may have hidden behind a different name.

The Birthday Boy and His German Roots

Happy birthday, Theodor Seuss Geisel! Born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts, the man we all know as Dr. Seuss would have turned 121 this year. And while the world celebrates his birthday as both Dr. Seuss Day and Read Across America Day—a national literacy initiative championed by the National Education Association—there’s a genealogy story hiding inside his family tree that should make every family historian sit up straight.

Here’s the thing: Geisel was the son of German immigrants. His maternal grandfather, Heinrich Seuss, came over from Germany, and that family surname—Seuss—is exactly why Theodor adopted it as his pen name. He was proud of those roots. But plenty of immigrant families in America weren’t just proud; they were practical. And practical meant changing names to survive, assimilate, and avoid discrimination. Sound familiar?

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Oh, the Places Your Ancestors’ Names Went

Close your eyes for a second. Think about sitting cross-legged on a scratchy classroom rug, your teacher holding up The Cat in the Hat, those bold black-and-white illustrations jumping off the page. Or maybe it’s a Sunday evening, and someone in your family is reading Green Eggs and Ham out loud, doing all the voices. If you’re a Baby Boomer, this is practically muscle memory. Dr. Seuss wasn’t just an author—he was the soundtrack of childhood.

Now here’s where your inner genealogist should start tingling: just like Theodor Seuss Geisel leaned into his German heritage with that pen name, millions of other immigrant families did the exact opposite. They tucked their Old World surnames away and reinvented themselves with something more American. Something easier to spell, easier to pronounce, and less likely to get you passed over for a job or turned away at a door.

The Name Change Problem in Genealogy Research

This is one of the most common brick walls in family history research, and it trips up researchers constantly. You’re looking for Schmidt and you can’t find him—because by 1920 he was Smith. Your Kowalczyk became Cole. Your Wojciechowski became Wayne. Even Ellis Island, that legendary portal of American immigration mythology, gets unfairly blamed—but the truth is, most name changes happened after arrival, not at the port.

So how do you find an immigrant ancestor who changed, shortened, or anglicized their surname? Here are some practical strategies:

Search phonetically. Genealogy databases like Ancestry and FamilySearch use Soundex and similar phonetic indexing systems. Use them. A search for Schneider might also surface Snyder, Snider, or Snyder—all anglicized versions of the same German occupational name meaning “tailor.”
Work backward from what you know. Find your ancestor in a later census or vital record where their name is already anglicized, then walk backward through the records decade by decade. Look for foreign-born notations, birthplaces, and parents’ names that can anchor you to the original homeland records.
Check naturalization papers. Declaration of intent and naturalization records often contain the immigrant’s full original name, birthplace, and physical description. These are gold. Find them on Ancestry, FamilySearch, and Fold3.
Look at church records. German Lutheran and Catholic parishes in America often kept records in German well into the early 20th century. Your ancestor might appear as Friedrich in the church baptismal register and Fred on every civil document after 1900.
Search passenger lists under multiple name spellings. Databases like Ancestry’s immigration collection and FamilySearch’s historical records allow wildcard searches. Use them liberally. Try the original spelling, try phonetic variants, try partial name searches.

Read Across America—And Across Your Family Tree

This March 2nd, by all means celebrate Read Across America Day. Read Oh, the Places You’ll Go! to a kid in your life. Feel that Boomer nostalgia wash over you like a warm wave. But then sit down at your computer and think about the names in your family tree that might have gone on their own little journey across America—changing along the way.

Your immigrant ancestors had stories worth finding. They just might be filed under a different name.

Ready to start digging? Head over to the search tools on FamilySearch and Ancestry and try a few phonetic and wildcard searches on that surname you’ve been stuck on. You might be surprised what—or who—you find hiding in plain sight.

Because as Dr. Seuss himself might have said: “Your family’s story is waiting. Go find it today.”

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Author’s Note: I want to be transparent that this content – From “One Fish, Two Fish” to One Family, Two Names: Dr. Seuss Day and the Genealogy of Name Changes – was created in part with the help of an artificial intelligence (AI) language model – Claude Sonnet 4.6. The AI assisted in generating an early draft of the content, but every paragraph was subsequently reviewed, edited, and refined by me. The final content is the result of extensive human curation and creativity. I am proud to present this work and assure readers that while AI was a tool in the process, the story, style, and substance have been carefully shaped by the author.