My name isn’t bizarre but it does seem to be unique. It is actually two English words but I am fairly sure I am the only one in the U.S. if not the world that has it. If that turned out to be true, I could tack on my other name and I am sure it would be. The thought occured that I could start my own Wikipedia entry without conflict. I am not one that is big on attention but I live 2000 miles from where I grew up and it would make it very easy for people to find me. It would be for novelty value as well.
Would you do it if you were in a similar situation?
I do have a unique name (my mom made up my first name out of two standard names, but in an unusual way, and my last name is uncommon). I never thought of the Wikipedia angle, though. I probably wouldn’t, just because I don’t think there is much about me that’s interesting enough to put it on the record in that way.
I know a number of people who are somewhat notable, depending on whom you ask (we’re all in the same organization). Many have had wikipedia pages made for them, and most of those have been deleted. The people in question report that it’s quite surreal to read on the “talk” page the discussions of whether they themselves are significant enough to be worthy of an entry …
It is quite subjective, and appears to vary from entry to entry. I know at least two people who quite clearly meet at least one of those requirements, but their pages just doesn’t manage to stay up there, for some reason.
So if even those people can’t stay up there, someone with no more notoriety than a unique name won’t stay either.
I do have a unique name, and so far I’ve seen no reason why that qualifies me to be an entry in anything other than a list of people with unique names.
I have a one of a kind name, due to unconventional spellings on both ends. I think uniqueness makes a Wikipedia page less necessary, since anyone with an Internet connection could find me in about five seconds.
My name is certainly not unique: there’s another person with the same name as me who has a Wikipedia entry. When you Google our name, he has the first two hits and I have the third, both on a website search and on an image search – so I guess that means I’m not as famous as he is.
Maybe in your dialect unique only means ‘the only one of its kind.’ However, you should know that it is also widely used to mean ‘unusual’ or ‘rare.’ Thus, ‘very unique’ is perfectly cromulent.
