How many immigrants were processed through Ellis Island?

How to get close to this number

Multiply the years by an annual rate. The station operated for a little over six decades, with the heaviest traffic concentrated in its first thirty years at a few hundred thousand people a year. Peak-era rate times peak-era duration dominates the total, which lands it in the low tens of millions.

The descendant figure in the explanation is what makes the number concrete: roughly four in ten Americans alive today have an ancestor who passed through. A count of historical arrivals is abstract; a share of a living population is not, and converting one into the other is the most effective way to give a historical statistic weight.

The correction at the end is the best part and it is worth repeating because the myth is so widespread: inspectors did not rename anyone. Names were taken from ship manifests written at the port of departure, so any change happened before the voyage or afterwards by choice. Family legends are a poor historical source, and this is the most common one in the country.