# Anyone else moderately uncomfortable being around people with your first name? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 25, 2008, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647 "2008-03-25T05:22:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Silver\_Tyger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Silver\_Tyger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_Tyger)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/41 "2008-03-25T20:38:32Z")
[QUOTE=Asimovian] How often does that actually happen? [/QUOTE] There’s another Silvercat on LJ so I had to go by Silvercat17. Every so often I’ll leave off the numbers when I type in the URL and it’s like, hey, that’s not me! If you google Silvercat, I’m the third one down. Huh, that’s kinda cool. I seem to be the only Thundercats one tho’. Oh and before I changed my camp name from Phoenix, it bothered me when my sister would discuss one of her friends (it wasn’t her real name, just what she went by. My sister knows weird people). I’m a girl of many identities, but I’m least attached to my real name. ---
**Author:** ![Asimovian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asimovian/32/172_2.png) [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/42 "2008-03-25T20:41:11Z")
My mom was just telling us a story this weekend about having the same first name (and a very similar email address) to someone else in the fairly large corporation she works for. And she recently got an email that was intended for the other person from that person’s husband, who had been kind enough to detail all the wonderful things he was going to do to/for her when she got home that evening. Apparently, it wasn’t _too_ racy, but enough to warm the blood a bit. So she forwarded it to the right person with just the note, “I think this was meant for _you_.” The other lady actually responded and said she’d gotten quite a bit of joy out of how mortified her husband was when she told him what happened. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![taxi78cab](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e47c2d/32.png) [@taxi78cab](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/taxi78cab)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/43 "2008-03-25T20:58:15Z")
I’ve never actually met someone else with my very uncommon first name, but there was someone with my name who was involved in a scandal a few years ago and that bothered me. But that had more to do with dragging my name through the mud (and the accompanying jokes that I heard repeatedly for a while) than with sharing my name. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/44 "2008-03-25T21:35:50Z")
It only bothers me when the other person is more attractive. Or obviously way cooler. I want to be the ‘‘cool **olives** ’’ dammit. ---
**Author:** ![Lanzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/74df32/32.png) [@Lanzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lanzy)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/45 "2008-03-25T22:03:35Z")
It would probably freak me a bit, since it has never ever happened, and the “name” site says I am the ONLY one with my first name. No it isn’t Lanzy. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/46 "2008-03-25T22:15:40Z")
Besides my dad, I’ve only known one other person (ever!) in my day-to-day life who had my same first name. That was almost 30 years ago and I remember it being kinda cool. Aside from celebrities (the rare athlete/actor/musician), I’m usually the only person anyone I’ve met has ever known with my first name. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Purl_McKnittington)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/47 "2008-03-25T23:11:07Z")
[QUOTE=zweisamkeit] If it makes you feel better, I’ve had people ask what I was crocheting… when I was _cross stitching_. 🙂 [/QUOTE] Hee! I have a friend who was asked what she macraméing, while she was using a drop spindle. I’m not sure how you’d confuse the two. ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/48 "2008-03-26T00:12:32Z")
Please. My first name is John, my middle is Michael, and my chosen appellation is Mike. There is no way in hell I could let name-sharing with others bother me. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/49 "2008-03-26T01:11:51Z")
[QUOTE=Bambi Hassenpfeffer] Please. My first name is John, my middle is Michael, and my chosen appellation is Mike. There is no way in hell I could let name-sharing with others bother me. [/QUOTE] This is no joke. My BIL with serious issues had two sons with two different mothers. One is named John Michael and the other is is simply Michael. The former goes by the full name of John Michael as an every day name. They decide to share names sometimes. It isn’t unprecedented however. A documentary series set in Vermont in the 1980’s had Larry, Daryl, and Daryl as a tightly knit set of brothers. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/50 "2008-03-26T01:22:52Z")
On the rare occasions I meet other Shannons, I find it disconcerting. Though I suspect this is mostly because I haven’t met a lot of people with my name like Daves and Sarahs have. When I do meet them I can usually guess how old others are with fair accuracy given that Shannon was only even moderately popular for three years. **DMark** , because I have a very rare surname there is only one other person in the **world** with my first and last name, and she just married into the surname in the past few years so I spent the first twenty-something years as the only one. Odder still, she now lives in the town I grew up in. ---
**Author:** ![pprgrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f6c823/32.png) [@pprgrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pprgrl)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/51 "2008-03-26T02:47:34Z")
Both my first and middle names are very old lady names, so I’ve never met anyone my age who uses them. I have, since birth, used my middle name instead of my first name, so it doesn’t bother me all that much when someone else has the same first name, because my first name doesn’t really feel like ‘me,’ if you know what I mean. I have several friends and classmates who have the same middle name as me, but all of them go by their first name. I think if I met someone my age who actually went by my middle name I’d be more than a little weirded out by it. I think I’d feel like at least one of us should be in our seventies or something. My middle name does get used in books, movies and songs quite a bit. I kind of like it in songs - I’m slowly collecting recordings of all the songs that use my name, and it’s a lot. I don’t like it much in fiction, though. I feel slightly uneasy the whole time I’m reading the book or watching the movie if one of the main characters has my name. ---
**Author:** ![HazelNutCoffee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@HazelNutCoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HazelNutCoffee)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/52 "2008-03-26T03:08:41Z")
I’ve never met anyone with my first name. It’s weird, because it seems like a fairly common name. I’ve met a few Koreans who share my Korean first name though. And don’t get me started on my last name. ---
**Author:** ![phil417](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/6bbea6/32.png) [@phil417](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phil417)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/53 "2008-03-26T03:24:41Z")
I have a fairly uncommon first name. I am, however, uncomfortable with the circumstances surrounding my naming. I was born in the early 1950’s. My mother and her best friend Betty decided that they would both name their first-born girls “Debbie Sue.” My biological dad, who was aware of this, was on a public bus. He heard an African-American woman call her little girl by this name & informed my mother that I would not be so named. My first name is the feminine form of my bio-dad’s uncle’s first name (I found out later that I came from a family of engineers & scholars, not just racist idiots). I few years ago I went to get a mammogram. My technologist’s name was the same as mine. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/54 "2008-03-26T03:44:49Z")
As a teenager I knew so many other guys named Rick that I kinda got used to it (though the sheer number was one of the primary reasons I changed my spelling to Rik). In my 20s, though, I shared an apartment with another Rick for a little over a year. And in the entire time we lived together, that guy _never_ got tired of the “joke” that we had the same name. It’d be like this every time we saw each other: Me: Hi, Rick. Him: Hi … (wait for it) _ **Rik** _! ---
**Author:** ![Kritter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a587f6/32.png) [@Kritter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kritter)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/55 "2008-03-26T04:34:56Z")
A little off topic, but… My younger brother’s name is Buddy. He was named after my father who also goes by Buddy, and for a few years we had a little dog named _Bunny_(so named because he was born on Easter). When my Mom would yell for one of them they would all come to see what she wanted. It always made me laugh. As for me, my name is Richard so I often meet people with my name, and as a matter of fact my best friend is a Richard as well, and there is no weirdness to speak of. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/56 "2008-03-27T01:25:23Z")
[QUOTE=Kritter] As for me, my name is Richard so I often meet people with my name, and as a matter of fact my best friend is a Richard as well, and there is no weirdness to speak of. [/QUOTE] As I learned from the “How many of me” thread (or whatever it was called), Richard is the 8th most common male name in America, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised 😛 I just remembered another “same name” situation that _did_ bug me, at least at first. Having the last name Osborne (and being the only Osborne in my school besides my sister), it wasn’t unusual for somebody to call me “Ozzie”, and I got used to the nickname growing up. My family moved the summer before my senior year of high school, and I ended up in a class at my new school with another guy whom everybody called “Ozzie”. He sat a couple rows behind me, and every time somebody said his name I’d be turning around going “Huh?” thinking somebody was talking to me. I started to get irritated and began muttering to myself about why this guy felt entitled to be called “Ozzie” when his last name wasn’t Osborne. This being 1983, I assumed he was a huge Ozzy Osbourne fan or something and had picked up the nickname because of that (see, they could have been calling him Ozzy, not Ozzie _g_). It wasn’t until a couple months later that I finally learned that the guy’s name actually _was_ Ozzie. Hmm. I still see the guy about once a week - I’ll have to ask him if his _first_ name is legally “Osborne” (former St. Louis Cardinals shortstop “Ozzie” Smith’s legal name is Osborne Earl Smith). And “Ozzie” can also be a nickname for Oswald or Oscar. ---
**Author:** ![NinetyWt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/cc9497/32.png) [@NinetyWt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinetyWt)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/57 "2008-03-27T05:32:39Z")
It’s rare that I meet anyone with my first name, especially the long form, although it is more popular in Britain (apparently). I don’t like it though, so it’s a bit of nails-on-the-chalkboard to hear it spoken. ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/58 "2008-03-27T05:42:50Z")
It just gets confusing at times (I’ll never know how we managed to end up with _three_ Gillians at the same time in one high-school drama class…) ---
**Author:** ![Asimovian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asimovian/32/172_2.png) [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/59 "2008-03-27T15:45:42Z")
[QUOTE=Kythereia] It just gets confusing at times (I’ll never know how we managed to end up with _three_ Gillians at the same time in one high-school drama class…) [/QUOTE] I have to ask – hard or soft G? ---
**Author:** ![Eureka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/74df32/32.png) [@Eureka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eureka)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647/60 "2008-03-27T15:58:33Z")
[QUOTE=Kythereia] It just gets confusing at times (I’ll never know how we managed to end up with _three_ Gillians at the same time in one high-school drama class…) [/QUOTE] My high school gym class had 4 girls with my name in it–two spelled correctly, and two spelled incorrectly. (OK, OK, we all spelled our own names correctly, it’s just that we had two of us using one common spelling and two using a less common spelling–the issue is whether it contains a c or a k.) That was a little odd. Also odd was the fact that at that time, I also knew three other girls with the same name, two spelled like mine, and one spelled not like mine. My name is not that common. It’s not rare enough to be weird, it’s just rare enough that I’m generally the only one using it in a group. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-moderately-uncomfortable-being-around-people-with-your-first-name/442647.md?page=4)