On Mon, 3 Mar 2014 22:15:13 +0100, nestork
wrote:

When my dad's family got off
the boat in Halifax, there was an immigration worker who was documenting
all of the immigrants and asked how to spell our last name. They
pronounced it for him (because many letters in Ukrainian don't have an
English counter part), and he wrote Kelebay, and it's been spelled that
way ever since.

This was very common at Ellis Island in New York. Immigration
employees might not read or write very well, minimum education, poor
penmanship, etc.

Often found in genecology research.