There is always the possibility they could be related - depending on when your ancestors came over to the US. The US immigration officials pretty much wrote down what they heard, and many last names got mangled. Handwriting could be misinterpreted - an "a" could very easily become a "u", for example ...these are the joys of genealogical research...!! I'm researching the Faith family which originated in Alsace-Lorraine. I can't 'imagine the original name was Faith, considering that "th" pretty much doesn't exist in German (don't know about French - obviously I haven't done a lot of research...). So now I have to try to figure out where the transformation happened, and what it was originally.