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Same Name | Pad Patter 10.20

My maiden name was unique until my cousin (with same last name as me) married an Ophelia. I remember getting collection calls and mail for her and having to tell them that I am not the right person. I was annoyed. What are the odds given that Ophelia is not very common?!

Now, I'm married with a hyphenated last name so I know I'm the only one with that name :) I also named my kids with unique names. My DH has the most common name. There is like 20+ people in our state alone with his name. If you add in his middle name, there's still maybe 3-5 people in state with the same name.
 
I've never met another me, but when I go to the doctors, there is another Donna Penn in the system. I always have to give my birthdate when signing in. Several times, test results have been misfiled.

My mother was Margaret Bryer. My cousin married a Margaret, who was then Margaret Bryer. Then the cousin's brother also married a Margaret. Crazy! Both cousins' wives went by Peg and then Peggy, to differentiate each other. To make it worse, all the husband's initials were RCB. They all lived in the same town, went to the same church, doctors, etc. Sadly my mother is gone now, but my 2 cousin's wives still have to put up with the confusion.

When my sister got married, she then had the same name as her husband's sister.

I forgot to Google - Looks like there are a lot of me, some of them are even dead.
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I grew up Michele Martin. Even with the less popular one L spelling, in early elementary school I had to write "Michele Ma." on papers because there was another Michele M. So I was very happy to take my husband's last name, Kendzie, and become more unique. :D Even shortened from the original Polish Kendzierzky (which my husband's dad did in college) it's still very unique. My husband has found one other Robert Kendzie, but I have never found another Michele Kendzie. When I google my name the first few pages are all me! Maybe even further, but that's as far as I looked.

I'm curious though. I know Google tries to give us results we want, showing us local results related to things we've done with our browser before. So of course it gives me my website, my Facebook, my Twitter, my comments on other people's blogs, etc. I wonder if someone in another state would find different results by searching my name.

Oh, and after reading this thread I searched for my maiden name. Nothing is me. I thought maybe something old might pop up. The internet started before I changed my name in 1996. It's kind of funny to find all these other people, including an NPR radio host, with my maiden name.
 
Not only do I share my name with others, I get their email. I've had my PayPal account billed because of one of them, I've had notices about NetFlix account that I set up (which I didn't). There is at least one other Heather *last name* out there who keeps using my email address as her own. It is very annoying!
 
Never met one in real life, but I there are a couple on fb & google.
Crazy story... my husband has an uncle named Floyd Wilkins and his daughter is Autumn Wilkins. DH's brother used to work at a hospital in Detroit and had a young patient once with the same name as his cousin, Autumn Wilkins. He thought that was pretty weird considering neither name is very common, but even weirder was the fact that her father was named Floyd Wilkins!
 
lmccandless said:
In middle school, there was another girl with the same name as me. We only had different middle initials. I was a straight A student and she was...not. One semester, I was given her report card by mistake which was all C's and D's. I had a total meltdown and cried at school before my homeroom teacher realized it was a mistake. LOL
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I'm sorry, I pretty much burst out laughing, I can totally see this happening in my mind!
:scared:cry:overreact
 
I never ran into a person who had the same name I had at birth or in either of my marriages. However, should I go to Ireland I suspect I'd find a few of each name-twin. Back when the internet and google were new, we all googled ourselves and I found an Mass. woman with the same name who had been stabbed to death! plus there was a woman who was an author. Those Irish names are difinitelypretty common in the Boston area .
 
My husband and I like privacy so we frequently search Google for our names to make sure nothing about us comes up haha when I was little I wanted to play pro basketball so I thought it was really cool that I shared a name with a WNBA player.
 
I have never really met or known anyone else IRL named Jan or my full name - Janice. I've met more in digi-land. When I google my married name I get all my scrappy stuff and social media, and when I google my maiden name I get an author and someone who works for the government in TN. There are a few results for my married name on Facebook.
 
Well - The only person I ever knew named Nevin was my father, and low and behold for the first time in 25 years - a guy I am working with now shares my father's first name.
Linda's are also not so common these days. My name is Linda, My husband Harry and my son's fiancee's mother is Linda and her dad is Larry. - go figure.
My best friend at work is also - Linda.
 
With first names - our granddaughter is in a small preschool class - 8 boys - 2 girls.
Both girls have the same first name of Harper. When I asked her friends' name was in her preschool class she told me "Harper" and I thought she was being silly until her daddy told me that story.
 
Before I was married, there was another Kim Titus that lived near me. The weird thing was that she also had a daughter named Jessica. That was, in part, why I went back to using Kimberlee. I had times where I'd get her mail because we lived in the same town, and then about 8 years ago, I had to file a police report for identity theft because my credit report had an unpaid (huge) balance from T-Mobile on it that went to collections. They wouldn't remove it from my credit unless I filed a police report, which seemed really stupid since it was an error, and not someone intentionally stealing my identity. I'd never used T-Mobile, and it turned out, for some weird reason, that it was actually Jessica Titus who had the credit issue, but then somehow it went back to the mom (Kim), and T-Mobile was fine with their collectors billing me even though the social security number obviously wasn't a match, I was married and didn't have that last name, and at that point we lived in different cities. It was incredibly frustrating. Spokeo is a horrible website, and it is to blame for some of that kind of stuff.

I think I'm the only one of me now. :giggle
 
This is the best. I didn't have to worry about my full name, but there were 4 Christie's in my grade at school. And we were all spelled differently, which made the teachers pull their hair out!
Christie (me), Kristy, Kristie and Christy!
And three of us were in the same classes until about Grade 10.

Sokee said:
Oh WoW!! For a short time I do know someone that had the same name as me. When I married my husband he had a first cousin that shared my full name at that time...... until she got married. LOL
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This happened to my friend's mum. She married into the family and shared the name for a few years then the other married out of the family, haha!
 
Well there are just 39 of us in the US with Beverly and my married last name. 111 with my maiden name. And they are mostly retired - cause Beverly hit its popularity in 1940-50s. I was named after my mother's best friend from high school.

FYI - Beverly used to be a male name in early 1900s. It can also be a last name.
 
IntenseMagic said:
I have never really met or known anyone else IRL named Jan or my full name - Janice. I've met more in digi-land. When I google my married name I get all my scrappy stuff and social media, and when I google my maiden name I get an author and someone who works for the government in TN. There are a few results for my married name on Facebook.
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My mom is a Janice. When she was adopted by my grandma, at six years old, she was Janice. But one of my grandpa's brothers also had a Janice. They wanted my grandparents to change my mom's name (like she hadn't been through enough). Yeah. That didn't happen. :giggle So the "original" Janice went by Janice Louella, and we still refer to her as that to this day.
 
tkradtke said:
Clara says she had several teachers tell her the first weeks of school how they could see the family resemblance, assuming that she was related to the senior boy!
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That's crazy! A Family Resemblance? Maybe there's some shared grandparents?

mrs2a50 said:
I have an unusual maiden name
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I thought my last name was unusual. It was super unusual for the area we were in. Less unusual if we headed to Holland.

lmccandless said:
I was given her report card by mistake which was all C's and D's
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I would've broke out in tears too! I did when my 8th grade art teacher gave me an F.

tinkerbell1112 said:
Jennifer Lynn
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That was my sister's name. She died at 6 months. My brother ended up marrying a Jennifer Lynn though, so we still have one in the family.

bcgal00 said:
I sometimes hear of or meet another named "Rae"
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One of my bosses long ago was a Rae. It was the first time I'd heard it.

michelepixels said:
I know Google tries to give us results we want, showing us local results related to things we've done with our browser before.
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If I google your name, I get you.
 
I have had a couple of same name incidents over the years too............. many many years ago when was married, my mother-in-law's first name was Mona.......... and I am Ona............ we both went to the same doctor! I arrived for one visit and doctor said, 'wow, you are keeping in good shape for being 65!' .......... I was 23 at the time! We had a good laugh but it happened in reversal as well, the doctor telling her that 'Goodness, what have you been doing to yourself! I think we need to make some changes to your lifestyle, you are looking a lot older than 25 years!' Glad the doctor had a sense of humour!

Then a few years ago I sent an email to my daughter Michelle, attaching some baby photos of her new niece......I sent it to her gmail account. I received an email back from a Michelle Boorman in SCOTLAND saying that sorry, she wasn't my daughter but the baby photos were cute........ bwhahahaaa! I had forgotten to add the .au at the end of my daughter's email address! Life is just so strange sometimes!
 
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