We Merrilees go rolling along
Someone with same first name, same last name (spelled differently) and same city was murdered and it made national news (the documentary is available to stream),
The next day I got a call at work from someone who heard the news and thought it might be me.
I’ve got a fairly common first name for my age cohort, and a fairly rare last name. When I first started traveling for work I used to check the phone books at the payphones in the airports or in the hotels I passed through. Remember those things? Anyhow, back then there’d be just a couple matching last names in any large metro area. And often zero in smaller cities. IRL I think I’ve met another Lastname somewhere somehow, like at a convention, but I’m not certain of it. If I did, it was decades ago.
I have, by design, exactly zero internet presence under my own name. I’m sure you can pay one of those companies to hand over the entire dossier the advertisers have on me, but straight up googling my [Firstname Lastname] produces zero hits on me for as far into the search results as I’ve ever checked. Which is pretty deep.
Back before the advent of Linked-in and Facebook that search produced two main results:
- A convicted armed robber serving time in a state I’d never lived in. He was also much younger and of a different ethnicity than me.
- A college professor who was a minor celebrity within his rather esoteric field. He’s about my age and ethnicity.
I just tried a few minutes ago, and a google image search produces a good 3 dozen people. Several of whom are in other countries associated with the origin of the last name. Most near my age but a few college age as my first name has had a resurgence since my era.
To strictly address the OP, I’ve never had any IRL or online interaction with anyone with my full name.
And yes, like nearly everyone I have gotten the occasional phone call from a debt collector for somebody who’d once given my number as theirs. Or maybe the collector’s internet sleuthing sucked. In any case, “Joe’s not here, man. And never has been.”
I’ve never met anyone with my name, but in the early days of Google, if I entered my name I would get lots of hits for a couple of golf courses in Scotland.
Google’s got better since then and it comes up with me now.
I also went through a period earlier this year where I was getting lots of searches for me on LinkedIn, from tech / engineering / aeronautics companies. I assume there is someone out there in that professional area with a name like mine, that all those companies were trying to check out.
This is a strange one. About 5 years after my wife died, I wanted to look at something on her old Facebook page, for reasons I don’t recall. I don’t use Facebook, so I just googled “Facebook” along with her name, which is pretty rare. I clicked on a match, which went to a Facebook page with her name and photo. At the top of the page was a quote from Gandhi, which is something my wife would do. I started reading the page but soon something seemed wrong. It mentioned her living in Florida, but I was pretty sure my late wife never lived in Florida. I looked at the photo again, and realized that it was not her, it was someone with the same rare name, and who looked almost exactly like her, close enough that it fooled me at first glance. A lot of this person’s interests also matched my wife’s. That was pretty spooky.
I’m another one whose name is unique. A googly search for my full name yields nothing but links to conventions I’ve either attended or worked at, fan groups of which I am a member, and references to obituaries for my late wife.
I changed banks because my deposit went to the other guy’s account.
I was given the wrong packet registering for college classes, and returned to the desk to find a very confused guy trying to get his packet. I stayed with the same college.
It’s fun to have a very rare last name that’s very cool sounding. Long time hotel clerks will say, “what a cool name. I’ve never seen it before”.
There are only three of us within 2500 miles of me (as far as I know), me, my step-mom and my ex-wife. The only ones besides them who I have ever met are my mom and sister (different names now) and my dad and grandmother (deceased). Anyone else related to me is at least a third cousin.
Spokeo claimed to have found 82 people with my name (including me), but when I went through the list I found that 45 of them had a different first name, last name or both. There’s a well-known singer whose last name is similar to mine – an extra letter added in the middle – and a dozen or so of the 45 had my first name but his last name.
Both my wife and her sister have Brazilian first names that are not only fun names, but they are unique enough that they each got their own “firstname@gmail.com” email address.
I have never met anyone with my names, but if you look it up on wiki, there are no fewer than 6 people with my first and last name. I think all the others have a middle name (I don’t). It gave me a turn to see that one of them was a murder victim.
I know of several people with the same first and last name as me. My first name is fairly common and while my last name isn’t rare my paternal grandfather had a big family so there’s lots of us around. I also haven’t seen or spoken to almost anyone on my dad’s side of the family in a decade so I have no idea who’s out there.
I use my middle initial on everything because as far as I know I’m the only one with this middle initial.
I have met one of my name twins. A customer at the bank I used to work at had a daughter with the same name but different middle initial. When I’d see the customer I’d say “Hi Mom!” and we’d both crack up because the customer was actually younger than me and people would look at us funny.
Another one of my name twins was a substitute teacher at the local school district. I’d get phone calls asking if I wanted to sub that day, and I’d get graduation invites from people who I had no clue who they were. Fortunately this name twin got married and changed her name so that stopped.
Just recently I was at a store where I have a loyalty card. The cashier pulled up my account and looked at the screen and said “Hey, that’s my aunt’s name!” We chatted for a minute and she said this was her aunt by marriage. I figured she’s probably married to one of my dad’s cousins.
I’m unique, too. My first name is very uncommon - it hasn’t hit the top 1000 in the US since the
50s and peaked at about 750 and my last is extremely uncommon.
Middle name (which I use as my preferred name) and last name: there’s a passel. Until Microsoft retired me a few months ago, there were 3 of us with the same posted first name, last name. We would get each other’s email occasionally. Once, two of us happened to be on the same group call. During introductions, the moderator said “Mark” go next, and I said “which Mark?”, moderator “Mark XXX”, and I greatly amused myself on the call by asking “which Mark XXX?” No one else LOL.
Now, if you add in my first name, I’m 99.9999% sure that my full name is unique. For that matter, I’ve never met or even come across another guy with my first name.
I’ve definitely heard of people, usually women, who give out a fake number to people who ask for it at bars if they aren’t interested, not realizing that it might actually belong to somebody.
I have no idea if it still exists but there was a number that would lead you to a recording that said something like, “sorry. I’m not interested. I just gave you this number to be polite”.
I have never met anyone with my exact name. If you saw my fist and last name both would seem pretty normal. I just looked it up. Both names are slightly below 300 on the list of most common. Googling reveals several notable but not famous people with my name. In order to find me you have to be a lot more specific than just my name
Jiang Qing Hitler?
The doctor when my baby was born had a fairly common family name from India. And his wife had a fairly common name from Ireland. He told me that he was pretty sure his kids had wound up with unusual names: Irish first, India surname.
I never dealt with him, but I was surprised to see my name (my last name is a little unusual) on the Vietnam Wall in Washington DC. I am alive and well, and he was an American soldier who died in Vietnam; but still, it was a little jarring.
I once worked in an office, in the same department with four other guys who shared my first name. Let’s say it was “John.” It got confusing:
“Hey, John!” “Yes?” “Yes?” “Yes?” “Yes?”
“John said he’d have that report for me.” “Which John?”
We solved the problem by calling the tall one Big John and the short one Little John. One opted to go by his initials: JD. Only I remained using my regular name. And it got rid of the confusion.