I was looking up the etymology of a racist slur which said
immigrants who were also illiterate (or could not use Latin alphabet letters). When asked to sign the entry-forms with the customary "X," the Jewish immigrants would refuse, because they associated an X with the cross of Christianity. Instead, they drew a circle as the signature on the entry-forms.
I ended up in a brief argument with someone over whether signing your name in non-Roman script would have been allowed at Ellis Island. Anyone know the answer?
Sorry but you are wrong. But also, whoever you were arguing with is wrong. And I don't know what the etymology of kike is, but that wikipedia article is wrong. So the good news is that everyone is wrong. Hurray!
Here is an example of one of the records at Ellis Island from 1913: http://evan.sysdude.com/ellisisland/ei_motte_full.jpg
mirror: https://i.imgur.com/zbMcZft.jpg
Notice that the document contains many names of people in different families, but all of the records are written by one person. Also notice that there are no signatures except the one at the very bottom. Ellis Island documents don't contain signatures. There is no giant "log book" where new immigrants signed their names as a first step towards their new life, in pursuit of the American dream, holding hands and walking into the sunset. When people say they went to Ellis Island and saw where their grandparents signed their name, they've misunderstood what they saw. I guess the reason people say "signatures" is because there are names written in cursive that they have trouble reading.
Back to the actual document, read the top. Under the title, it says:
"...to be delivered to the US Immigration Officer by the Commanding Officer of any vessel having such passengers on board upon arrival at a port in the US.
So that document was prepared while the passengers were onboard a ship, handed to the Immigration Officer at Ellis Island, who checked it. Imagine what kinds of lines people would have to wait in at Ellis Island if they had to argue, through translator, with immigration officials about what the spelling of their new name would be and whether or not a Cyrillic signature would be acceptable.
Your signature is just your signature, it doesn't have to be legible. You can draw a picture of a whale for your signature if you want to, as long as you're consistent on your documents. A signature in Cyrillic is no more unreadable than one written in Latin. But immigrants didn't sign their names at Ellis Island.
