Have you ever had experience(s) dealing with someone who had the same name as you?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Back in the 90s, a woman knocked on my door one afternoon. She accused me of having an affair with her husband. I told her I was pretty sure I wasn’t. She handed me a matchbook with my name and phone number on it and showed me a picture of a creepy looking guy. I told her that if I was having an affair with someone, it sure as hell wouldn’t be that guy and shut the door in her face. It was weird because I had just moved the day before so obviously she was following me. I was surprised that someone else had my name since it isn’t a common name. Aurora had gotten my number from the phone book. For several months after that, I would get calls from guys who said they had met me at a club and wanted to get together. It pissed me off that she was using my phone number to deflect unwanted attention.

But it got weirder. A year or so later, her name was in the paper when she was involved in a scandal. “Exotic dancer, Aurora Maire.” That was awesome./s My mother said some of her church friends had asked if that woman was me which just cracked me up. I mean really, they thought I became a stripper?! Jokes were made at my expense. A few men called offering their “help”. I don’t know what that meant, I hung up on them.

Over the next several years, I got phone calls from collection agencies and once from a prison looking for her to give her some lab results. I can’t remember now how I found out that she had moved to Texas. The daughter she had given up called me once looking for her. I got a call late one night from someone who said “this is your mother” and I said “no you’re not” and it took me awhile to convince her she was wrong. I do wonder what ever happened to her. Nothing good I imagine.

Anyone else have stories about “that’s not me”?

2

Nope. A quick Google search of my name only reveals me. I’m a one-off.

3

While I can’t come close to matching that, when I worked for a forest products company I found out that a shipping manager in Pittsburgh had the same name as mine (I was in IT a bit south of Seattle). Phone calls were rare, but I did get quite a few of his emails until he managed to get the senders to correct the address.

4

Back in the early 1990s I worked at a large Department of Energy R&D facility, and a fireman at the facility had the same name as me. I would get calls all the time from bill collectors, thinking I was him.

5

LinkedIn has four other people with my first and last names.

Facebook has over forty with my last name and either my first name or the most common nickname (which I don’t use). A lot of those don’t have pictures, though, so some of them could be duplicates.

I’ve never had to deal with any of these people, though.

6

I share first/last name with two other people of which I’m aware. One of them co-owns a family-run produce market/bakery/restaurant with his brother that carries the family name. Since the place is only about 60 miles away, I often have to tell people that, no, I’m not related to the pie folks. The other one is in another state and is involved in real estate.

I’ve met the former but not the latter. Fortunately for me, they both seem to be stand-up guys, so the rare occasions I’ve been asked if I’m either one of them, I don’t have to fear being arrested, assaulted, or worse.

7

Not me personally: My last name is pretty rare, and I’m the only one with my full name in the US. There might be one in Germany, but he keeps a pretty low Internet profile.

But one of my professors from grad school, in Montana, has the same full name as one of the guys in my D&D group in Ohio. Last year, I was visiting Montana, and mentioned it to the professor. He said “Yeah, there are a lot of us. Once, I got a call from someone looking for a radio engineer in North Carolina”.

Guess what the D&D guy’s profession is, and what state he’s from?

8

The only person I know had my name was a cousin, who had some prominence in sports, so when you google my name you get some things which are me, and some which are him. He was like forty years older than me, though, and is long gone.

I did encounter another Guanolad once though. He liked wine, apparently, and also nabbed the username on Flickr before I could.

9

I’ve been mistaken for this guy.

10

I have a nephew (actually, first cousin once removed) who shares a name with a former leading Heisman Trophy candidate. The nephew says it’s the best way to maintain his own internet anonymity, because every search for his name turns up literally scores of pages for the football player before they get to him.

11

Yes. My first name is incredibly common, but my last name is very uncommon. And, yet, there is a guy with my same first name and last name, who has lived within 15 miles of me (in suburban Chicago) for the past 35 years. Even stranger: both of us formerly lived in Wisconsin.

I first learned about him in 1990 or 1991. One evening, the phone in my apartment rang. There was a woman on the other end of the line, looking for someone by my name – she pronounced my surname differently from how I do, but in a way that’s very commonly used by people who are just meeting me, and don’t know the actual pronunciation which I (and my family) use.

She asked, “I’m looking for [name].” “That’s me.” “Who used to live in Madison?” “Yes, I used to live there.”

After several back-and-forths with her, I said, “If you’re looking for [name], who lives in the Chicago area, but used to live in Madison, you’ve found him.” She laughed a bit. “Well, that may be, but you sound nothing like my ex-husband! You’re much too nice!”

After I got off the phone with her, I called my girlfriend. “You’ll never guess who just called me…my ex-wife.” “WHAT???” :smiley:

A year or so later, I discovered that my name-doppelganger had been convicted of misdemeanor cannabis possession. And, about ten years ago, while driving through the suburb where he lives, during election season, I saw “my” name on a yard sign: he was running for village supervisor.

I still have not ever met him, and he’s never sought me out.

12

A friend of mine has a name very close to the star of the TV shows Knight Rider and Baywatch.

No one has my same name that I know of, altho a google search would turn up a few, I am sure, as it’s uncommon but not unheard of. There is a novelist with my same name, but I have not read any of their books.

13

My name isn’t particularly uncommon, so there are plenty of people with the same Firstname Lastname combo. Several of them have much more prominent personas than I do, including a few in the computer field I’m in. This makes it hard for people who don’t know other things about me to track me down.

But there is someone else with the same name in my city. We go to the same eye doctor. He may or may not be the same person who retired from the board of directors of a local charity, also with the same name. I somehow got physical mail about that last one.

14

One reason (though not the only one) that I ordinarily go by a version of my middle name is that the combination of my first and last names is very common.

I’ve never actually known anybody with the combination; but I once had a friend show up at the place I was living (long before cell phones, and we were off grid) in a state of considerable worry because they’d heard on the news that someone with that first/last name combination had been murdered in the same general area, and they were afraid it was me.

And when I moved from my previous house, the mail carrier told me that while they hoped I wouldn’t take it wrong, they were glad to see me move, because they had another person with that name on the same delivery route (I’d already started using my preferred name, but some mail still came, and still comes, to my legal name; and they often drop the middle name and even initial.) They must have been a very careful post office, because I can’t remember ever having gotten her mail – the street address would have been different, of course.

15

I’ve read the obituaries for many years, and one time I was startled to read an obit for a woman with exactly my (real) first and last name. That gets your attention! :open_mouth:

Once, for a few years in my misspent youth, I was having an affair with a guy who was married and whose wife’s name was very similar to mine. If I’m ThelmaLou then she was ThelmaLil, and we both went by “Thelma.” At least he didn’t have to worry about accidentally blurting out the wrong name at an inopportune moment. They’re both deceased now, and I assume they worked everything out on The Other Side. Me, I’m old and out of the game.

16

My last name is pretty rare, but it happens to be the same as the last name of a district attorney who some years ago was charged with a crime. At the time that that happened, I got a couple of calls from newspapers who were apparently trying to reach him. I did clip out a newspaper headline that read something like “MYLASTNAME CHARGED WITH MOPERY” and had it hanging on my refrigerator for several years.

17

My surname is shared with a family which ran a coal and oil supply company in the Detroit area for many years. My father traveled frequently as part of his first job; one morning, while he was in Detroit for a meeting, he saw a headline in the local paper: “[Our surname] INJURED IN GANGLAND HIT.” He saved that front page for many years, but I don’t know what became of it.

18

I was an early adopter on Gmail, and have FirstNameLastName @ gmail.com. My last name is commonly misspelled (with an “e” where there should be an “o”). As such, for a few decades I’ve gotten the email of my Gmail doppelgänger every now and then. We’ve become quite friendly, and if the email seems important we’ll forward it to each other. We’ve exchanged mortgage applications, job referrals, insurance information and death notices. We’ve never met, but I would consider him a friend.

As the holder of FirstNameLastName, I will get email for others (FirstNameLastName1, etc.), and I’ve tried to keep a list of their actual email addresses, and if something comes through, I may forward it out through a mass email to everyone. Last year, it was someone needing a job reference, and none of us knew who it belonged to.

A few days later, I’m in a discussion with a friend from IRL on Facebook about something, and someone with the doppelgänger’s name comments (it’s not the actual one, because I know him) on the post. I casually mention “hey, there’s someone in Texas looking for a job reference - if that’s you, here’s my email.”

He responds with “oh, I know - I’m on the email chain!”

Turns out he lives in my town as well - we’ve tried to meet up for lunch or a drink, but life is busy you know?

19

There are only about 8000 of my last name in the country, My first name is not rare but not common, never had one in a class from 1st grade through 12th. Had a guy about 50 miles away with same first and last name who didn’t pay his bills. Used to get his calls occasionally. Interestingly enough there was another dentist in CA with my first and last name.

20

I share the same names as hundreds of other women my age. (Mary Katherine) My surname isn’t quite as common as Smith but there are at least 17 other women with my same name in this state. There were even more when I lived in AZ.

I once got a handwritten letter from a young person saying she was writing to every one with my name because she was trying to find a long lost aunt. She shared enough details to make me write a letter back telling her that I wasn’t the person she was missing and suggesting other options for the search. It just felt like the right thing to do.