Harry Cohen (Kotkin, Katkin, Kotky, or Katky) - Change of last name from Kotkin to Cohen

When, where, and why did Harry change his last name from Kotkin to Cohen (even though he was a levi)?

The manifest [1, 2] for the voyage of the S/S Gothland that brought him to the U.S. (which left Antwerp, Belgium, on March 3, 1910, and arrived at Ellis Island on March 15, 1910) shows that he used the name Cohen when he filled out the manifest in Antwerp (despite the myth that the name was changed by a careless clerk at Ellis Island).

The book _Chicken Hill Chronicle_, by Norman B. Cohen and Lawrence E. Cohen [3], is a memoir of a Cohen family (not necessarily our Cohen family) that relates (pp.143-145) the story of a Sima Kotkin who changed his last name to Cohen upon coming to the U.S. for the second time in the late 1880s, in order to fool immigration authorities. This may be a coincidence, completely unrelated to Harry Cohen, but it is worth recording here. (Could Harry have been a relative, say a nephew, of Sima, who underwent a similar name change so that he could point to a relative in the United States? An argument against this theory is that the Gothland manifest ([2], column 18) indicates that Harry stayed with an R. Abelman at 1260 Delancy.)

Some time ago, I came across a journalist named Joel Kotkin [4] and wrote to explore whether we might be related. I mentioned that my grandfather had adopted the name Cohen even though we were leviim and not cohanim. The journalist replied that he was really a cohen.

[1] https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000191126937915&...

[2] https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000191127402846&...

[3] https://books.google.co.il/books?id=XOuM1pA39vsC&pg=PA145&l...

[4] https://joelkotkin.com/