The problem of relabeling Trump as "Drumpf."

Many of those who seek to diminish Donald Trump have jumped at the idea of tagging him with the name Drumpf, which was the surname of his ancestors if you go way back. You have to go back before his father immigrated to America, which was 1885, but it is there in the records. TV comedy man John Oliver seemed to think it was a very funny idea to rename Trump "Drumpf," because it sounds dumber, as many non-English names do to the ears of English-speakers.

But is that the kind of prejudice Trump-haters should want to stir up?

Immigrants in modern America, however, do not often change their names anymore..... Name changes do remain popular among entertainers. For example, Jon Stewart, whose “Daily Show” is in some ways the parent of Mr. Oliver’s HBO program, was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz. As Mr. Oliver noted, Mr. Trump once criticized Mr. Stewart for changing his name, tweeting that “he should cherish his past — not run from it.”

And many politicians have also undergone name changes, notably two presidents, Bill Clinton, who changed his name from William Jefferson Blythe III, and Gerald Ford, who was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. Mr. Trump’s potential opponent in the general election, Hillary Clinton, long held to her maiden name of Rodham, but she now campaigns without it.

Maybe Oliver should have checked to see which side would be helped more before he went with the idea of laughing at other people's funny names. But quite aside from that, this business of laughing at foreign names is — to use an epithet often thrown at Trump — xenophobic.

By the way, I have a last name that got anglicized in its spelling, in the Drumpf/Trump fashion. Althaus became Althouse. My family name, like Trump's got respelled in the 17th century. I've always understood a name change like that as a kindness to the ordinary people who were going to be trying to spell it. You've anticipated the difficulty, accommodated them, and, graciously, made them correct.