Years ago my sister was excited to find out that the current number one female sex symbol’s real name was exactly her’s - first, middle, and last.
My brother was reading a biography of his favorite baseball player and was stunned to discover that his idol’s baseball hero shared my brother’s name - first and last.
I was in a bar looking for a game of pool. The winners of the table informed me that they were playing “partners.” I turned to a stranger and asked him if he wanted to shoot a game with me. We had begun the game when I asked what his name was and he said “Jeff”. I said “My name is Jeff too, that’ll get confusing. Maybe we should use our last names.” He said “Okay, I’m Jeff Wilson.” I pulled out my license and showed him that my name also was Jeff Wilson. He showed me his license as well.
In the little town where I grew up, there was a guy who lived on the street behind me and one house over with my first and last names. I used to get his mail all the time. And one time I had a friend who shared all three of my names, only his middle name was spelled with an e rather than an a. Weird, huh? I’ve not run into another person with either my first nor last name since the 1970s, even though they are both really common…
Got a visit from some nice detectives once after someone with the same name as I opened a checking account then wrote a bunch of rubber checks. I was sued a few years later by a local car stereo chain over the bad check they accepted but the nice judge dismissed the case before it started. That was all after I spent a couple years clearing my name after my wonderful brother used my name instead of his when dealing with various police agencies. He had even obtained a state ID card in my name instead of his.
One of my best friends from high school and I share a the same first and middle name. We were called by our last names in high school.
We both married guys who have a last name that is traditionally a girls first name.
I went to a very small community college, about 2000 students. I got a letter in the mail one day about my financial aid, and noticed that there was stuff listed that I didn’t sign for. Upon calling the fin aid office, I found that there were THREE “Jessica Rae Lastnames” and they’d gotten our files mixed up.
I was having a day off during the week a few years ago and a friend rang me at home. He asked what I was doing. I told him I was just listening to the races and having a few bets. After we chatted for a while he asked what I was going to do now. I told him I’d have more bets on the races. He asked me did I really think I could make a living doing this. I asked him what the hell he meant and he told me he had rung me at work and they told him I had resigned the previous day. It turned out that although he knew the suburb I worked in he had rung an entirely different organisation who up until the previous day had had an employee with the same name as me.
When I was 12 or 13, I kept getting calls from a woman looking for her boyfriend, Richard. Her name was Robin. My sister’s name is Robin. The woman finally found her Richard and they’ve been married for some time. I never did meet them. When I started my new job (insurance biller) this year, one of my first claims to handle belonged to Richard.
My Grandma showed me a feature in the Indianapolis News, with a story and picture of a lady with my (quite uncommon) first and last name, taking her son trick-or-treating.
I’ve never met another person with even my first name, let alone my last name. The chances of another individual living within 40 miles of me, with my EXACT SAME NAME??? Bizarre, to say the least.
The day after my daughter was born, I moseyed down to the maternity ward nursery to look at her, as she was, of course, perfection personified. I was stunned to see another baby with her first and middle names spelled exactly the same, delivered by my OB the day after I delivered!
I know I got the right one tho - the other baby was two pounds lighter than mine.
When I was stationed in England[early 70’s] I got very interested in doing brass rubbings. I’d travel to various towns just to get as many different images as I could. I stopped one day in a small village to rub, and was told I’d have to register for that privilege, at the local church. I did, and halfway finished, I was called to, by a middle-aged gentleman, who , it turned out, had the same first and last name as me. Someone at the church saw my name in the registration book and called to tell him a namesake was in town. I spent a very nice afternoon at his house, eating and talking, and taking a tour of his property. Tried every way we could to find a family connection, but there just wasn’t one. We corresponded for several years until his death. His widow wrote and politely asked if the correspondence could now be terminated, since she couldn’t bear to write to someone with the same name as her husband. Thus ended my being able to write letters to myself.
A few months ago, we woke up to find our cell phone not working. The hubby flipped out, accusing me of not paying the bill. It took over an hour on the phone with customer service to figure out our payments were being posted to an overdue account opened by a woman in Boston with my name.
Well this isn’t quite the same thing, but I think it’s worth posting here. At the University of Canterbury’s history department, until quite recently, were four lecturers named Dr Fudge, Dr Orange, Dr Rice, and Dr Pickles.
I became friends with a guy who has the same last name as I do, and it turns out his sister and I have the same first name too (though not the same middle name). The odd thing is I knew about her from doing vanity searches on my own name, so in a way I’d “met” her before I ever met him.
Two girls in a class of mine in junior high school both had the same name, first and last. The funny part was, they were both foreign, and neither first nor last name was that common.
