The downside of sharing a first and last name with someone.

[Shadow Dragon]

Former CNN anchor Larry King tweeted to his followers that he was still alive on Friday, despite some followers believing otherwise.

Following the death of famed playwright Larry L. King earlier that day, many users on Twitter mistook the playwright for the CNN anchor and starting tweeting that King, the broadcaster, died instead.

"R.I.P. Larry King not just CNN viewers will miss you!" one Twitter user wrote. Another user actually tweeted at King's Twitter account asking, "Hearing a rumor that you're dead. Are you dead?" Others took to Twitter to clarify that King, the playwright, not King ,the broadcaster, passed away. But King took matters into his own hands, setting the record straight.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_2348216.html

I think this fooled a lot of people into thinking that it was THE Larry King that died, not the playwright.

[Plot Device]

Years ago when I was working for a financial firm, I answered the phone one day (I was a cubical dweller on a cube farm where several hundred of us answered the in-bound calls for the firm's 800-phone number). And when the guy on the phone gave me his account information, I pulled it up an my screen and told him: "Your balance is zero, sir. It looks like it was cashed out two weeks ago, the check was mailed to your house, and the check itself was cashed two days ago."

He was livid. He said he had been waiting for the check to arrive in the mail and it never came. I told him it was mailed to his address (we checked the address together, and it was correct). The amount of the check was over $20,000. He said he wanted to see a copy of the signature on the back of the check. I said I would mail him a photo copy. And then he added: "I hope I'm wrong, but my 19-year-old, good-for-nothing son shares my name, and he still lives at home with us. He doesn't have a job, and I wouldn't put it past him to have cashed this check."

[kuwisdelu]

[Alessandra Kelley]

Both my husband and I have pretty unusual names. I have found only one person with the same name as me, and she is a Brazilian missionary. Last year she and her husband moved to Portland, Oregon -- where an orthodontist with the same name as my husband lives.

Hopefully none of our acquaintances will be confused by this.

[LJD]

Happens all the time in my family.

My grandfather has the same name as a former premier of my province. My dad has the same name as a famous cartoonist, has trouble flying because someone with his name is on the no-fly list, and had his bank account frozen while out of the country because someone with the same name had an overdue student loan.

For Christmas, I gave my dad a book written by someone with the same initials and last name as me, as a sort of joke.


and high school:
administrator: We can't give you your schedule because you have a grade 10 English book that you never returned.

Me: I'm in grade 9, and I haven't even taken grade 9 English yet. There are two of us named L--- D---. It's the other one who never returned her textbook.

administrator: (consults official list containing the names of every single student in the school, supposedly) There's only one of you listed here...

yeah, that was fun...

[Zoombie]

I once committed a whole week of debit card fraud because someone thought I was Zoombie X Zombie instead of Zoombie Z Zombie. Man...was my face red.

(No, really, I went to get a replacement debit card after I lost my old one and they mixed me up.)

[kuwisdelu]

Originally Posted by Zoombie

Zoombie X Zombie

I've yet to come across the pairing in AW fan fiction.

[Zoombie]

>.>

I have said too much.

[thebloodfiend]

Originally Posted by Zoombie

>.>

I have said too much.

Don't give him ideas.

There are Biggest Loser fanfics, after all. And both trainers are a gay man and bisexual woman in a relationship with another woman (and she has kids!). Le sigh.

Rule #34: If it exists, there is porn for it. You exist, therefor... you know the drill.

[Celia Cyanide]

I always thought it would suck to be one of the many people who are also named John Waters. Either that or be really awesome.

[kuwisdelu]

Originally Posted by thebloodfiend

Don't give him ideas.

There are Biggest Loser fanfics, after all. And both trainers are a gay man and bisexual woman in a relationship with another woman (and she has kids!). Le sigh.

Rule #34: If it exists, there is porn for it. You exist, therefor... you know the drill.

It's official. AW fanfic needs to exist.

I want a harem end.

[Celia Cyanide]

Originally Posted by kuwisdelu

It's official. AW fanfic needs to exist.

I want a harem end.

I thought that was what the House of Love was for?

[blacbird]

My honest-to-Dog real surname isn't terribly common, although my first name is very so. Just for fun a while back I googled the combination, and discovered that I share it with the world's premier specialist in the scientific study of the horrible and sometimes deadly black funnel web spiders of Australia. He works at the U. of Queensland.

caw

[donroc]

There is a Donald Platt who is a well-published poet, which is why I use my middle name to differentiate. That is the only identical first-last name situation I have encountered.

[Xelebes]

No one shares my name in Canada. Haven't come across any in the US however there are some close ones. I think I've spotted a Philip Siebold or two. There is also the famous botanist and physician, Dr. Phillip von Siebold, who published a few books on botany in Japan.

[druid12000]

I had to get a transcript of my bank account a few years ago. I told the teller my name and she immediately asked for my ID. Puzzled I asked why (I had been going to that branch for years and knew all the tellers). She said, 'There's like three hundred of you in the computer'.
I have a very popular and generic name.
It's even in a movie.
Gah!

[Sarpedon]

Ugh, I share the name of a well known comedian. I've gotten in the habit of using my middle name.

[Roger J Carlson]

When we registered our daughter for kindergarten, her records were all messed up. They had the wrong birth date, the wrong address, the wrong parent names -- everything. After some research it turned out that there was another little girl registering that year with exactly the same name including the middle. We had many issues with school records until the other girl moved out of district.

A few years ago, I switched to a new doctor who re-prescribed all my medications. A couple of them were denied because they weren't covered by Medicaid Part D. The only problem is I'm not retired and don't get Medicaid. Turns out that doctor has another Roger Carlson who does.

[Williebee]

My personal email is a middle initial different from a member of the Republican "old guard" in North Carolina. I get a lot of his mail. I started forwarding it after the first couple. Nice guy. We exchange notes now and again.

[DeleyanLee]

I googled my name once and discovered that it was also the heroine of a Harlequin Romance and the character was a part of a series. At the time, I was a member of RWA, so I emailed the author for the giggle. She not only giggled, but sent me a signed copy of the entire series so I could read what "I" was doing.

My name also belongs to a prominent lawyer in the Atlanta area, IIRC. Other than that, my own accomplishment come up in the search.

[thebloodfiend]

My name belongs to no one but me, which will be quite nifty when I finally purchase my domain.

[Plot Device]

Here's a true story that might make for an awesome set up for a novel or a screenplay.






A young 20-something girl who had about the lowest-paying job at the financial firm where I worked (over 5,000 employees) labored as a lowly file clerk in the bowels of the company's vast records room. Her name was Curry Michaels.

Unusual name, right??

I sometimes needed to e-mail her an internal e-mail via the company's Lotus Notes e-mail system. And when you would go to the field for "To" to fill in the name of the person you were attempting to e-mail, it (of course) started to second guess your intended recipient by flling it in with all the possible names you might have been angling in upon. So, if you typed in the name "Curry" it filled in with SEVERAL possible names. Now even though she was the only person at that company whose FIRST name was "Curry," it turns out that about 5 other people worked there whose LAST name was "Curry."

And ...

Among the 5 folks whose last name was Curry, there was a dude on the Board of Directors who made about 120k per year, and his name was .... Michael Curry.

So, one day, I needed some records from the records room, and so I sent her an e-mail, and within minutes I got a reply back NOT from the young lady named Curry Michaels, but instead the reply came from Michael Curry, the dude who drove a Lexus and had his own private secretary. He sent the e-mail as a "forward" to Curry Mciahels, and he cc'd me. In it he said to her:

"Hello Curry,

Here's another one for you. Have a great day!

Mike"

I called Curry on the phone and I apologized vehemently to her. She said "Happens all the time. He gets my stuff. I get his stuff -- and some of his stuff is SUPER sensitive! Mike and I have fostered a great relationship because of it."

[archerjoe]

Harvey Pekar created a strip from his experiences finding another Harvey Pekar in the phone book. Before he thought to contact the other person, he saw his obituary in the paper. He felt sad but he wasn't sure why he was more sad over this than any other stranger's obit.

As for me, there are two other people with my first and last name in town. One occasionally writes letters to the local paper complaining about TV shows. Because you know the Fargo Forum is the hot spot for TV executives to listen to viewer complaints

[DancingMaenid]

My first and last name are both pretty common, so I'm far from unique. It briefly caused some trouble because scheduling at my company is all computerized, and it turns out there's another employee in another state with the same first and last name as me. A manager once accidentally scheduled that person instead of me, even though they didn't even work in the same state.

However, my middle name and last name, which is what I actually go by, is really uncommon. It's a bit intimidating, actually. When I google myself, most of the results that actually involve that name combination are about me. And then there are these weird results for illegal downloads of Supernatural episodes or something, which I find a little alarming since I don't want people to think it's actually me. The results are pretty incoherent, though, so I think I'm probably safe.

[blacbird]

A "Larry King" moment happened again just today. I caught a news headline that Richard Adams had died. My instant thought was "Richard Adams, author of Watership Down". But, nooooooo, it was Richard Adams, the gay rights activist.

Back in the early 1960s, in the first year of its existence, the New York Mets baseball team for a while had, on their 25-player active squad, three pitchers named Bob Miller. They were legendarily horrible, still hold the all-time record for most losses in a season, and maybe this was the reason.

caw