[orkon]

I also found the following sentence strange:

> That belief is partly why many Irish, Italian and Polish immigrants who came to America in the early 20th century whitened their children's names to avoid persecution and increase their chances of social mobility.

> Tim Machuga is a software engineer who also knows what it's like to be black for a minute. He is a white man with an African name.

A typical Eastern European last name to me.

I wonder what does my first name (Oleksii) sound like to folks in the US?

[jofer]

As far as immigrants "whitening" their names in the early 20th century, it's pretty common, for whatever it's worth... My wife's last name is Gage, but her grandfather changed it from Gadzeki after he lost a local city council race for what he felt was his "damned Polish last name" (his words). This was in Detroit, and he worked for Ford, which at the time, had a fairly strong culture of "Americanizing" recent immigrants. There was a massive wave of anti immigrant sentiment in the 20's and 30's targeted at Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants, and it lingered for many decades afterwards.

Also, the first name bias is quite real. I dated a lady for most of my late teens - mid 20's named Ticia (pronounced Teecha, rather than Tisha). She's Ojibwe Chippewa, but this was rural TN and SC, so race is treated as a very binary black/white checkbox, and she falls into the "white" category. However, Ticia is a "black" name, for the most part. I lost count of the number of times I saw blatantly rude reactions when she introduced herself.

[bluedino]

People turned a lot of Z's into S's and things like that.

That's a big reason why there are so many similar spelled surnames. They'd write it down 'wrong' at Ellis Island, and that's what you were stuck with. Oleksii, Oleksy, etc.

I agree with you that Machuga doesn't sound black at all. Maybe Hispanic if you're pronouncing it 'Mah-choo-gah'

[somebehemoth]

As an American with an Italian last name I've experienced some of this personally. It is ridiculous. Oleksii is a cool name and I imagine how it is perceived here depends a lot on how you pronounce it when introducing yourself. My family has always pronounced our last name with an emphasis on phonics to make the name sounds "less weird" or easier to pronounce for Americans.

Interesting that this submission got flagged. I wonder why?

[CommieBobDole]

That one struck me as strange as well - "Machuga" doesn't sound like a stereotypically African name at all. And an image search for it brings up a sea of pasty white faces. Maybe Tim met somebody from an area of Africa where it's a common name and he mentioned it or something.

I feel like the reporter asked around the office for people who'd had these experiences, and Tim mentioned his, so he put him in the article.

[tdurden]

As an American, I found most of this article strange and difficult to believe.

[ALittleLight]

Sounds Russian or Slavic to me.

[rhino369]

Does Oleksii sound like Alexy?

[orkon]

yeah, similar, but with 'O'-sound instead 'A'

[RyJones]

Russian