One thing that is certain NO NAMES were changed "when individuals came through the various ports".

Ship manifests were recorded in at the Port of Departure from documents (ie passports) issued in the immigrants home country.

You are absolutely correct in that the modern day transcribers of the Ellis Is Data Base made numerous mistakes... which is easy to do given the handwriting, the fact that some manifests list the given name in the first column, surname in the second column while others are opposite... and some alternate ! Just try searching for the male given name Ivan, which may in some cases be a surname.... but if you look you will see the transcribers mistook some as surnames where they in fact where given names.

Of couse some manifests are simply in error in regards to spelling... but there is nothing like the tales we have heard about names being changed at Ellis Island... simply that did not happen!

In regards to making name changes, most often no legal document was made changing the name.. most occured from employement records or school records.

Here is something interesting to try... search at Stephen Morse One Step Ellis Island search (far superior to the "regular" Ellis Is org, even though Morse uses the EIDB) for all names beginning with CHRAB and also CZRAB, in this case CZ would sound like CH.

http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/EIDB/ellis.html

Whom are you searching for?

Robert Jerin
Croatian Heritage Museum
Cleveland Ohio