Regardless of how it came to be, one of my relatives did an exhaustive search and found that my family’s original name was "Telushkin" and that we came from a village long ago decimated, the Village of Slutzk.
@fsonicsmith
So you passed KGB test.
Telushkin is indeed Russian surename :) Sounds good.
Of course i don’t know how it works when immigrant came through Ellis Island, but i have jewish roots myself, my grand-grand mother’s surename was Cohen, she was a daughter of Rabbi in western Ukraine.