Indeed. Same with my maternal 5th great grandfather's family, German immigrants.Yes, it's unbelievablely dumb and desperate. Literally countless millions of Americans have altered surnames so they're more easy to pronounce or because of the way language changed. I have a basic Irish last name, at some point in time hundreds of years ago they added an extra vowel to be pronounced the way they said it in Ireland, the way ppl kept saying it here, to differentiate from another family, etc.
They all got hard about this bc John Oliver came up with it, a brit, who can't say "water" properly
Surname evolved from Lenz --> Lentz --> Lintz --> etc.