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  • 2016-02-29 (xsd:date)
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  • Was Donald Trump's Family Surname Once 'Drumpf'? (en)
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  • On 28 February 2016, the host of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver launched into a lengthy segment about Donald Trump, which culminated with encouragement from Oliver to use Trump's ancestral surname, Drumpf. (The relevant portion begins at around 18:40): The Drumpf revelation wasn't new. We came across mentions of it in the course of research for a separate Trump family-related claim: On 2 September 2015, the New York Daily News was one of the news outlets reporting on Ancestry.com's release of multiple historical records of prominent families. Several of the documents belonged to the Trump family: One of those documents was Frederick Trump's naturalization form, on which his signature was rendered Trump. The Boston Globe placed the name change not at Ellis Island, but sometime during the 1600s: Confusing the issue, a September 2015 New York Times profile reported that Donald Trump's grandfather had used the surname Drumpf after immigrating to the U.S.: Speculation over when Drumpf became Trump wasn't new, either. A 19 April 2011 International Business Times article claimed it was Frederick Trump who altered the spelling: Other sources never mentioned Drumpf at all when tracing Trump's family tree. About.com's Genealogy page on Trump's ancestral heritage indicated Trumps lived and died in Germany. Trump himself mentioned the name change in passing in his 2004 book Trump: Think Like a Billionaire: Trump was referencing Gwenda Blair's 2000 book The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire. In it, she wrote: Later, however, Blair appeared to contradict her earlier claims about the timing of the name change in a 9 September 2015 interview with German news outlet Deutsche Welle. In answer to a question about Trump's German roots, Blair replied: It is true Trump's family surname was originally Drumpf, but the exact timing of the name change still isn't clear. Biographer Gwenda Blair appeared to have traced the switch to Trump to the 1600s, but she later said that Friedrich Drumpf emigrated to the United States in 1885, a statement that appeared to contradict her prior writing. At any rate, neither Trump nor his father ever bore the surname Drumpf, and whether Trump's grandfather anglicized that name at some point remains unclear. (en)
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