Meeting Their Namesake

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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It’s completely puerile to make a big deal about meeting someone with the same name – there’s no reason you should have anything in common. But it’s also totally irresistable. Here are some cases of famous meets

Winston Churchill writes to Winston Churchill
Although he’s not much remembered today, the American novelist Winston Churchill was well-known in the US and the UK in the 1890s when the British future politician was a journalist and started writing his own books, and found that people thought he was the novelist. So he wrote to the American Churchill about how to straight things out. The British Churchill eventually agreed to use his middle initial “S”. The two apparently met at least twice

Paul Simon meets Paul Simon on Saturday Night Live
Illinois Senator Paul Simon appeared on the December 19, 1987 episode of Saturday Night Live, when musician Paul Simon was the host (for the 4th time).

Orson Welles meets H.G. Wells in Texas

The names aren’t exactly the same, but it’s pretty impressive that two men associated with War of the Worlds ran into each other, apparently by chance, in San Antonio Texas. Better yet, they were on the same radio show, and their exchange has been preserved

I’m sure Dopers can point to many others.

One that I’d kind of like to see is the comic strip characters both named Dennis the Menace meeting up. The cute cowlicked American kid debuted on March 12, 1951 (although cartoonist Hank Ketcham was recycling a lot of gags he’d used before ( Wheres Dennis? The Magazine Cartoon Art of Hank Ketcham by Hank Ketcham | Goodreads ) . The definitely not-cute red-and-black sweatered UK kid of the same name first appeared on March 17, 1951, only five days later. (the character was named after a British music hall song “Dennios the Menace from Venice”. One wonders if Hank Ketcham ever heard it. Google Ngram shows that the phrase “Dennis the Menace” actually had some currency in the late 1940s, so probably everybody picked it up from the zeitgeist).

in any event, their styles are completely different, which would make a crossover something interesting. Thus far we only have fan art

It wouldn’t be hard to imagine, though – less likely comic crossovers turned out surprisingly well – Archie meets The Punisher, Batman meets Elmer Fudd.

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Plácido Domingo meets Placido Flamingo:

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Only one so far? You people aren’t trying.

I don’t think author Stephen King ever met his namesake, politician Stephen King (the one I’ve heard called “The scary Stephen King”), although he did issue a twitter messahe begging Iowans to vote the racist representative out of office so they wouldn’t be confused

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Lindley Armstrong “Spike” Jones died in 1965, four years before Adam “Spike Jonze” Spiegel was born, so they couldn’t have met.

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Musician Jerry Lee Lewis (born 1935) overlapped with comedian Joey “Jerry Lewis” Levitch(1926-2017), but I don’t know if they ever met.

Philip J. Klass, Aerospace journalist and UFO debunker (1919-2005) overlapped with science fiction author William “Philip Klass” Tenn (1920-2010), but I don’t know if they ever met, either. Both wrote about aliens and flying saucers. And I’ve spoken with both.

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In 1988 Smithsonian Magazine had an article about the 100th anniversary of the first Sherlock Holmes story. A young man featured in part of the article was named Sherlock Holmes. His mother was a Conan Doyle fan, and hung it on him. He said he’d had two choices, change his name or keep Mom happy and embrace the character. He chose the latter.

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I don’t think they’ve ever actually met, but it would be fun to see Sasha Cohen and Sacha Baron Cohen do some pairs figure skating. (Especially with SBC in his Borat mankini.)

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Silent film Action Movie Star Harrison Ford (1884-1957) certainly overlapped with Modern-day Action Movie Star Harrison Ford (born 1942), but I doubt if they ever met.

I was confused as hell when I saw the first Harrison Ford’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, not that long after Star Wars made us all familiar with the latter’s name. I knew it was WAYY too early for Ford to be getting a star for appearing in American Graffiti, Star Wars, and a few random other films. (This was even before Raiders of the Lost Ark)

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I remember at least one NFL game where Mark Anthony Carrier tackled John Mark Crrier. Both were known as ‘Mark Carrier.’

This is a little more of a stretch, but there was another game where a defensive player with the last name of “Shipp” tackled Napoleon McCallum. McCallum was a Navy alumnus.

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The actor Stewart Granger used that name because he couldn’t use his legal name at the time, that being James Stewart.

I liked Charlton Heston’s mention of his born name, John Carter, He started using Heston in his teens, in high school, because that was his stepdads name, and he didn’t want to mention his folks had been divorced. Charlton was, I think, his mother’s maiden name.

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Jaguars linebacker Josh Allen both sacks and intercepts Bills quarterback Josh Allen in the same game.

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The Dallas Cowboys once had two players on the team, at the same time, named “Roy Williams”. One played on defense as a cornerback, the other played on offense as a wide receiver.

Their jerseys included their middle initial to tell them apart, but they had different uniform numbers.

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These are great!

My knowledge of sports is zilch.

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Well, if you’re okay with teams, the CFL used to have the Roughriders and the Rough Riders. They met in the 1976 Grey Cup, where the Rough Riders beat the Roughriders on a late catch in the Rough Riders end zone.

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Brian Cox (actor) meets Brian Cox (physicist):

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There’s a guy in Australia who has been a champion blood donor named James Harrison. Before he had to stop at age 81, their cutoff age, he’d donated platelets, plasma, and whole blood well over 1100 times. He’s a hero because his blood was used to make a medicine that combatted Rh factor problems in babies. When I went to search out more info about him the first hits I got were for an American football player with the same name.

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The 1962 Mets had pitchers Bob Miller and Bob Miller. The first was at the beginning of a long and successful career*; the latter was released and ended his career (but was able to earn his pension due to service time on the Mets). Clearly, they met.

In 2000, the Mets had Bobby Jones and Bobby Jones. In 2002, both played for the San Diego Padres.

These are the only times two players with the same first and last name were on the same roster.

*And one of only three original 1962 Mets to play on a league champion Mets team.

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Around 2000, China had two Olympic speed skaters named Yang Yang. To differentiate, they were billed as Yang Yang (A) and Yang Yang (S).

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Jacksonville Jaguars pass-rusher Josh Allen sacked Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen on Nov 7 2021, making it the first time in NFL history a player sacked a quarterback with the same name.

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About 15 years ago, a cow-orker, one slow afternoon of cow orking, googled my name just for shitz and gigglez. He found a web site having my name in the URL. He asked me if it was mine.

It was not. Taking a look, I found it was a gay porn site.

Investigating a little deeper, I found the site (or at least the IP number) was located in a smallish town in northern Illinois (far far away from where I was). A bit more investigation turned up that there were TWO people of the same name there – A father and son, I presume. (It’s not a particularly common name.) I found an obituary for one of them – The younger one, I think.

I am not aware of anyone else in the United States (or anywhere else for that matter) with my name. There is one, a distant cousin, with the nearly-same name spelled a bit differently.