Ancestry changing you surname and why?

Question:

Ancestry changing you surname and why?

my maiden name is longerbeam I have been tracing my family history I have found out we came from germany and or name was langerbein or langbein why would we have changed it?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Actually, there is probably no "we" involved in the change. Looks to me as if you are back to the 1800s in your search, and it is critical to remember that most persons then, were not literate. If someone bothered to even ask "how do you spell that?", there probably would have been a blank look. Add that to the fact that when someone immigrated, they likely had a very different accent from the persons entering the name in the record.. whether it was an immigration record, census, marriage.
Picture yourself back in old Germany, and the parish priest is listing the children and parents. Ok? One "educated" priest enters it one way. Next year, new priest, new spelling. Next priest down the line looks at the records... and doesn't bother him. He is fully aware that it is Hans, the shoemaker on the corner, and his wife makes wonderful streusel.
If you were doing research the old way, where you sat in the church, scanning one page at a time, you would immediately see what you want. Fast forward to the time when we rely on a computer, punch it in google, and unless it is exact, you get no hits. Problem is that the internet could be full of the right family... it is technology getting in the way.
So... have a cup of coffee, and evaluate your goal. You want to find the parents of Hans the shoemaker and his wife's maiden name. How it shows up in the record, is immaterial. You won't lose points for wrong spelling. You win points for imagining many different ways that it can show up, and finding the baptism record that everyone else said does not exist.
The first time you run into this concept, can be disconcerting. The further back you get in your research, you realize it is standard operating procedure.