# Poll: Do you have a unique real life name? (Anonymous, obviously) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 13, 2014, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202 "2014-10-13T14:26:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/81 "2014-10-14T12:10:05Z")
Quite ordinary for both first and last names. You can even spell my first name backwards and get plenty of hits. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/82 "2014-10-14T12:33:37Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > You can even spell my first name backwards and get plenty of hits. Makes me think of the old _Wizardry_ PC game from the 80s, where the two wizards were named Trebor and Werdna, thinly veiled standins for two of the programmers who worked on it. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/83 "2014-10-14T12:43:44Z")
My name is fairly common now, but I was 35 before I met someone else with my first name. My brother’s first name is pretty freakin’ unique; his email address is _firstname_@ [aol.com](http://aol.com), so there wasn’t anybody else out there with that name. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/84 "2014-10-14T13:24:33Z")
My real life name is very common. Google shows that among the people who share my name are a travel photographer, a real estate agent, a dancer, a physician, and a British journalist. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/85 "2014-10-14T16:04:48Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > Quite ordinary for both first and last names. You can even spell my first name backwards and get plenty of hits. [Wow, BOB, wow](http://youtu.be/Q-Zx1JyJKAQ?t=2m19s). ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/86 "2014-10-14T20:54:58Z")
Several people with my first name and last name combo spelled like mine, which is a little unusual in that both names have more and less common variants and mine is the less common variant each time. I may be the only person on Earth with my full name, but since I don’t use my middle name and practically nobody outside my family knows it, that doesn’t seem particularly important… ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/87 "2014-10-14T20:58:05Z")
Well, there wasn’t really a good answer, but my name is pretty rare in my country (the US), and is pretty much unpronounceable to most of my fellow citizens. Back in the home country it’s not exactly common either, though not totally unheard of. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/88 "2014-10-14T21:51:46Z")
Hmm… I’ve found that there’s one of me in South Africa. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/89 "2014-10-14T21:56:55Z")
If you google my firstname-lastname combo, you will only get me, or my grandfather or great-grandfather who had the same first and last names. You’ll get photos of other people with my last name, of whom there is a large extended family in Utah and Southern California mostly. But we don’t know for sure we are related. If we were related, we would be no closer than 3rd cousins, however (i.e. our great-grandfathers might have been brothers, but we can’t prove it. They all immigrated at different times.) So my family name is pretty rare in this country, and I think it is also pretty rare in the home country. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/90 "2014-10-14T22:18:37Z")
I must say, I am quite surprised by the voting here, and not quite sure I believe what it seems to show. I would have expected far fewer “utterly uniques”, and many, many more “unique combinations” (people like myself with at least one rare, but not unique, name that is going to produce a unique combination when mixed with anything else even moderately uncommon). ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/91 "2014-10-14T23:07:15Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Unlikely. Despite the deeply-embedded trope, agents and clerks at immigration ports did \*not \*change immigrant names. They were strictly \*forbidden \*to, even if the immigrant wanted to be known by an alternate or Americanized name. Some changed their name through simply using it and establishing their lives around it, but most had to get a court-issued paper to move forward and keep, say, old-world degrees and letters of reference relevant. > > Immigration was an important and contested area of US bureaucracy. Immigrants had to have valid papers, officially issued by their government. Those papers had to be accepted and handled at face value, not as memos. Names had to be recorded exactly as on those papers. When transliteration was needed, a clerk fluent in that language handled the task. > > Errors happened, yes, but there is no known case of an immigrant having their name changed, spelled differently, rearranged or Americanized. That makes a good story down the road, but Grandpa Shlomo Finkelstein was not heartlessly revised into being Samuel Frame by da gummint… he did it himself. I dispute this. We used a dentist name Mesirov. His mother was known to us as Mrs. Goldstein. We asked and he explained that the family name in Russia was Mesirov, but at Ellis Island, they couldn’t spell it and named them Goldstein. This guy knew the family history and, when he grew up, he changed it back. In addition, there were errors. Some of wife’s relatives ended up with the name Russin because they tried to put “Russian” on the wrong line and ended up on the name line. Okay, that’s not the fault of the immigration officials, but the previous story is. As for me, my last name is an Anglicized version of a Russian name (my US born father changed it when he was looking for a job in 1937–the year I was born) but turns out to be a moderately common Scottish name. My first name is always in the top ten of boy’s names and has been first. It turns out that I am one of four with a Wiki page. Two of them, at least, have middle names but, as far as I can tell, at least one other lacks a middle name. Neither I nor my mother or father had a middle name. At any rate, since there seems to be two of us with the same first and last and no middle names, I would imagine there would hundreds if not thousands more. And if you ignore middles names it might grow to tens of thousands or more. ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/92 "2014-10-14T23:33:59Z")
My first name is a fairly common Finnish name but combine that with an archaic old English middle name and a very common English surname and I would say that mine is unique. Not uncommon in Australia to have mixed names, so you could Alessandro John Fong for example. Just to confuse things, my first name is often used as a nick name for a common angle name, so if you google that with my surname you do get a nice young man from England who would be more than happy (for a fee) come and sleep over. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/93 "2014-10-14T23:40:01Z")
As best I can tell, from Googling and checking what the white pages say, my name and surname combo is unique in the United States. I don’t know about the rest of the countries in the world though. Even if someone in, say, Germay or France has my name combo, it wouldn’t be pronounced the same way. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/94 "2014-10-15T04:37:39Z")
I am the only person with my first name-last name combination. Googling my name only brings a few hits and they are all me. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/95 "2014-10-15T11:26:07Z")
I am, at the present time, uniquely named. I was named after someone who died a couple of centuries ago and consequently my name isn’t a common one in the family and the family name is only shared amongst a few hundred people. My first name is rather rare outside Ireland too so diasporic families with my family name are unlikely to use it as a name for their kids. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/96 "2014-10-15T12:39:50Z")
There’s actually one other **Qadgop Mercotan** out there, but his middle name is **Steve** while mine is **the**. ---
**Author:** ![Koldanar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@Koldanar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koldanar)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/97 "2014-10-15T12:43:18Z")
There is one other Firstname - Lastname I am aware of, but First - Middle - Last is totally unique. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/98 "2014-10-15T13:35:56Z")
My last name is uncommon: there’ve never been more than 3 or 4 entries in the phone book with my last name (and that includes growing up in the DC 'burbs), and often I’ve been the only one with my surname in the local phone book. My middle name (which I go by) is fairly uncommon as well. The combination seems to be unique - a Googling gets me the following, with firstname and lastname standing in for my actual middle and last names: “[www.whitepages.com/name/firstname-lastname](http://www.whitepages.com/name/firstname-lastname) There is 1 person in the US/Canada named firstname lastname. Get contact info including address and phone.” ---
**Author:** ![interface2x](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/99 "2014-10-15T13:41:53Z")
There are a bunch of me out there from what I can tell. Interestingly, a recent movie featured a fictional killer whose first and last names are my first and middle names. And while these names aren’t exactly unheard-of, I wouldn’t say they’re exceedingly common, either. I was half asleep on the couch and had to rewind my DVR when the commercial was on to make sure I didn’t dream hearing my own name. If you’re curious, this character was played by Idris Elba. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2014, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202/100 "2014-10-15T16:29:29Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > There’s actually one other **Qadgop Mercotan** out there, but his middle name is **Steve** while mine is **the**. If alt accounts for comedic purposes weren’t frowned upon here, I would right now be logged in and stalking you as **Qadgop Steve Mercotan**. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-do-you-have-a-unique-real-life-name-anonymous-obviously/701202.md?page=6)