My first name is most uncommon. However, one summer of my 20s when I worked as a grocery store cashier, a woman with my first name and same spelling came in my line and wrote a check. It was the first time I had ever met someone else with my name.

My middle name is a family name and my last name is pretty common.

Now that IS funny.

I have a pretty unusual last name, and I go by my middle name, but there is a guy in Atlanta who has the same name as me- the name he goes by, anyway. Weirdly enough, we both own Cadillacs (I have a 1966 DeVille that I only take out now and then) that we get serviced at the SAME GARAGE not far from my house. (Which is how I know sort-of who he is.)

He apparently lives out in the burbs, is much older than me, and teaches ballroom dancing on cruise ships. About 15 years ago I had a series of messages left on my answering machine from a woman trying to reach him, who had met him on a cruise, but she'd never leave her damn phone number- she just got more and more despondent that he wasn't calling back. She kept mentioning what a great time they'd had dancing together. It was like listening to a surreal soap opera playing out over a couple of months. Finally, she DID leave a number, and I called her and told her she had the wrong number... she took it remarkably well.

To the best of my knowledge there have only been three Jessamyn Wests ever and none of us have the same middle name configuration. I was penpals with the author Jessamyn West when I was in fifth grade. The other living Jessamyn West is about my age and lives in Portland OR or thereabouts and is in a band. I only know about her because she used to work at Microsoft and friends of mine would try to send email to me using Outlook but since she was in the all company address book, they'd send it to her by mistake.

...we both own Cadillacs (I have a 1966 DeVille that I only take out now and then) that we get serviced at the SAME GARAGE not far from my house.

LOL! If you're lucky someday he'll get stuck with one of your bills.
;-)

He ... teaches ballroom dancing on cruise ships.

Making it even more wonderfully surreal.
:-)

I had a series of messages left on my answering machine from a woman trying to reach him ... she just got more and more despondent that he wasn't calling back.

Very sad. Like when you get a message on your machine from someone desperate who has no idea s/he's calling the wrong number. I have an hour-long, angry, rambling, nonsensical (and heavily medicated!?) answering machine taped message like that that I've saved for years. Someday I'm going to record it digitally and sample it into a song. It was that bizarre.
:-)
But sad, too.

I am the only person with my name in the world. I know this because I'm related to everybody with my surname, and some relative did the full family tree. I really don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I happen to like my name, which is good.

Very occasionally I've had phone calls from random second and third cousins, wanting to chat. That's pretty cool.

I am the only person with my name in the world.
. . .
That's pretty cool.
posted by goo 01 December | 21:25

Yes. I don't doubt that "goo" is a rare name.
/kidding :-)

heh. I got teased mercilessly for my name through primary school, because the first syllable sounds like goo. I had to embrace it.

And this ad for the yellow pages didn't bloody help. My name is most often pronounced goo-go in Australia, when people can pronounce it all (Gourgaud). Googah is the most common though :(

Gourgaud? Prounounced French-like kinda as "Gor-goh" (but with a French "r")? You should be proud. It's a name worthy of a Japanese giant monster like Gojira or Rodin. I'd be much happier with that than with "Guy," who wasn't even my biological dad, LOL.

I am the only person with my full name, but there is both a romance novel and a restaurant with my first and middle names, and the restaurant is named after the owners' daughter, who also shares my first and middle names.

I am definitely the only person in the world with my full name but there is a very successful and famous current NFL defensive back with my first and last name. He's much richer and better looking than I am although actually I'm much taller and heavier than he is. Every time his team plays ours, the guys at work give me a hard time about it and question my loyalties.

I have never found anyone with my full name but I have met and e-mailed with an number of people with my first and last name. All of them are younger than I and female. One of them is an assistant to the photo editor of a celeb rag and we have email addresses that are the same except for one small thing so people are always sending me pictures of celeb beavers and puking starlets. Oh, and I got a heads up on the Aniston/Pitt split almost two weeks before it first appeared in the press.

There's pretty much no chance of meeting someone with all 3 of my names.

I found one other woman with my first and last name. She's about10 years younger than me. I emailed her but she never emailed back. Maybe she thought it was some odd version of stalking. Technically I guess it was. Oh well.

...people are always sending me pictures of celeb beavers and puking starlets.

And you're not posting them here? arse_hat, arse_hat...
;-)

I hate how serious I am now, but I think you could've made some dough-ray-me on that Aniston/Pitt info.

You're a good man. I'd be posting celeb beavers and puking starlets all over, and e-mailing them to friends. And to enemies, even. You just can't trust me. Not with celeb beavers and puking starlets. Whom can you trust with celeb beavers and puking starlets? arse_hat, that's whom. Mr. arse. hat.

Not so much trustworthy as I don't give a damn shane.

Never actually met another with my first and last names, although I've followed the exploits of a farmer and a soccer player for some time. I'm pretty sure nobody else would have my middle name, though oddly there are people who have my first name and my middle name as a last name.

My last name is uncommon enough yet there was someone unrelated living in my hometown for many years. When I was in a volunteer group that had a German girl from Frankfurt (working in Illinois) join up, she did know people with my last name -- my ancestors came from the Frankfurt/Hesse/Fulda area. But most of the well-known people in the U.S. that have it I'm not related to.

I have no idea if I'm related to Hans (although I'd be proud to be), Georg, or William D.. I'm certain I am no close (post-immigration) relation to Clint. There's a fair to good chance I'm related to Billy as he's from Pittsburgh, which is where my ancestors settled 200 years ago, but then so did a lot of other Germans. I'm also probably related to Jim the gymnast, and I'm pretty sure I'm related to the planetary geologist.

One problem is that we have a family tree book published in 1909 and revised in 1971, but my Dad has misplaced the newer edition and I haven't found it after looking in obvious places in their house for about four years.

I had a co-worker with my first name and maiden last name (when I was still using it), but she went by Debbie. Once in a while we'd get each other's inter-office mail, email and phone calls.

Another co-worker's mother had the same maiden name as my mum down to her middle initial AND they were born on the same exact day.

Nobody else has my name, but I knew a guy named Lee Harvey Oswald some years back.

Everyone with my last name is directly related to me, because my last name is only two generations old. It's one of those long polysyllabic Thai surnames invented by Chinese immigrants (in this case, my grandfather).

Embarrassingly enough, although my last name is sixteen letters long, my extended family is rather large and my first name is common enough in Thailand that there might be another person with my exact name in its entire 22-letter glory. I vaguely remember finding someone with my exact name on ICQ back in the 90s who was distantly related. At least I'm the only me that Google knows about, so that's all that matters :)

Interesting, pravit! Tangentially, I've wondered before how many people there are in the world with Chinese ethnicity (and Indian) - both these countries have huge populations but also huge diasporic populations, and if you added both together they must make up more than the majority of the world's total population. My curiosity hasn't extended to actually sitting down and working it out, though.

Gourgaud? Prounounced French-like kinda as "Gor-goh" (but with a French "r")? You should be proud. It's a name worthy of a Japanese giant monster like Gojira or Rodin.

Aye, that's it. I love it now, but when I was eight my greatest dream was to get married and change it. It sounded too much like the sound of snot.

I met someone who had my first name as both his first name and his last name. Seriously, his name was "Michael Michael."

I know of two people locally whose names are palindromes. One Is Daron Norad, who gained fame in Mississippi for being the cop in America who had arrested the most drunk drivers (in 1989?? I can't remember). Of course, life, being the silly old bitch that she is, made it imperative that he later get arrested later for (natch) drunk driving.

I got a call once from an older man with my last name. His son, who has my first name, is homeless and I guess he found me while looking for him. The father wanted to get together for lunch, I think he wanted to know my family history, but it felt kind of creepy, so I declined. I saw his obituary a few years later. A very weird, alternate reality kind of experience.

Quite a few years ago, I suddenly started getting letters from Centrelink (our social security type organisation) that referenced a pension that I was apparently receiving. After a couple of very confusing phone calls, it turned out that there is another guy living in the same city with the same first, middle and last names and the same date of birth. There ware way too many zeros in the calculations for me to work out the odds on that one.

There is (or was) someone else living in Seattle with my first and last name. I know this because I got the phone call from the Alameda County (CA) Sheriff's office when his father died. Given that my folks were living one county away from Alameda at the time, it kinda shook me until I called home and found that everybody was OK.

I've seen people online who have my first and last names... and they are mostly young women.

I had never thought of Tyler as being a girl's name, but whatever...

My last name is fairly common and my first name is not uncommon, so I have several name-doppelgangers. A gang of them, actually.