My wife’s mother is named Karen. She’s married to a guy named Frank.
My wife’s best friend is also named Karen. She’s also married to a guy named Frank.
(Different last names, but a strange coincidence.)
I’ve mentioned that I have a very common name. At one point in time, an old doctor’s office came in with the wrong chart, and the doctor was confused when what he thought was a 19-year-old girl turned out to be a 29-year-old woman in a business suit. I was part horrified and part flattered that it took him five minutes of talking to me to figure it out.
My homebirth midwives, after I gave birth, informed me that a woman with my extremely common last name and not-quite-so-common first nickname was also a patient there as well. Our due dates were 3 months apart. I keep hoping I’ll meet her at the annual picnic, but no dice so far.
I’ve known two Mike Millers, but not at the same time or in the same place.
There was a guy with my name living in my town. I got calls for him or his wife all the time.
He was listed right before me in the phone book. A good friend of mine was listed right after mine.
There are two cousins with the same first and last name, but they live in different parts of the country. I know one of them, another Doper knows the other one.
I used to know Robert James Brown (commonly called Bob Brown) when he was a member of the Australian Parliament. Unfortunately, I can’t claim to know Robert James Brown (commonly known as Bob Brown), who is now a better known Australian politician.
A guy on facebook with my exact name contacted me because he was getting things he figured out were meant for me. We intentionally became “friends”, confusing things further.
Totally forgot…
I have a common first name (i.e. Jen) and married into a common last name (i.e. Smith). For most official stuff I am hyphenated Jen Weird Polish Name-Smith, but for some stuff I didn’t bother.
One of the places I didn’t bother to hyphenate myself was the vet’s office. My cat died, I sent her ashes to be cremated through them and they called me when they were in. I went to pick them up and they asked my name. The front desk lady comes back with a box my cat could have fit into while alive. She hands it over and I tell her I don’t think that is mine. She asks me the pets name and goes back and gets my tiny box.
Two brothers live across the street from one another in my neck of the woods. They both married a Tammy, so there are two Tammy “Smiths” living across from each other.
Oh yeah, my father, his dad, and his dad all shared the same name. I wanted to continue the tradition with my son, but my wife wouldn’t let me.
Years ago a friend got a prescription for a diaphram. Her name was Andrea. When she picked it up and got it home, she looked at it. What she got was heart medication. It was for Andrew (same last name).
We could just picture some old guy holding up a diaphram and wondering if he was supposed to swallow it.
My fiance has two uncles who each named a son after the other. So uncle “John King” has a son named “Fred King” and uncle “Fred King” has a son named “John King.”
I’ve known three unrelated Elisheva Schwartzes - one in my high school, one in a summer program, and one in college. Elisheva is a Hebrew name that’s not unusual in the Orthodox community, although it’s not so super-common that you’d expect to meet this many of them.
I have two uncles (brothers) married to women named Mindy, who go by Mindy I and Mindy II. There are a ton of overlapping names in the family, because it’s a big family - three Chaim [lastname]s (distinguished by middle name), many Reuven [lastname]s and Malka [lastname]s (named for my grandparents), etc. But those are less fun, because they’re all related to each other. I also know a married couple Eli and Elli.
For a funny take on this situation, try Will Grayson, Will Grayson, by John Green and David Levithan.
I know two Brian Smiths that used to live in the same house. I met both independently. One is a web designer and the other is a drummer in a band.
My grandfather was Ignacio. My uncle is Iñaki. My cousin was Iñaki to the rest of the world, but Iñaki-Son or Cucho (short for Iñacucho, “little Iñaki”) to the family.
My mother used to be Maritere or Tere, but then they moved to Navarra, where the usual nickname for María Teresas is Maite (which is also the Basque word meaning “beloved”, Basque being one of the area’s two languages). It was my father’s brothers who refused to call her anything but Maite, making her “Maite-Catalan” to distinguish from “Maite-Mom” and “Maite-Home” (their little sister). Mom knew one thing for sure: she was not, in a million years, going to name a daughter of hers María Teresa - thus, I did not become Maite-Four.
My sister in law’s aunt and godmother is a María Teresa, called Tere (she lives in Madrid, not in Navarra): at one point, in front of the whole family minus me, SiL proclaimed that the daughter she was carrying was going to be a María Teresa after her godmother (I understand she’d mentioned this to her husband/my brother and he’d tried to derail it but without being clear enough, apparently she thought this would be a good way to present it as a fait accompli and have him stop “waffling”). Never mind not having the subtlety to say “after both of you”… there was much jubilation on her side of the family, much silence on ours, and when the noise subdued, my other brother drily pointed out “so, Maite-Four? Because if you think you can have a María Teresa here and not have people call her Maite, you’re delusional.” She would have had the same firstname-lastname and nickname-lastname combos as our aunt (different second lastname).
The Kidlette is a Paula, the name was chosen by her brother.