I'm sick of my name

[Argabarga]

My last name is fairly unique, I assume anyone out there who has it is a relation, no matter how distant.

My first name's not terribly common either, not UNcommon, but, "Paul" doesn't get a lot of usage for some reason. Now, the one place I worked in college, from management down to peon, there were SIX of us in the office building (Guys with first name Paul) don't know how that happened, and if you wanted to cause utter confusion, just page "Paul" overhead, and you'd get six guys from 3 different departments responding.

[greek_jester]

My first name's not terribly common either, not UNcommon, but, "Paul" doesn't get a lot of usage for some reason. Now, the one place I worked in college, from management down to peon, there were SIX of us in the office building (Guys with first name Paul) don't know how that happened, and if you wanted to cause utter confusion, just page "Paul" overhead, and you'd get six guys from 3 different departments responding.

This reminds me of way back before the accountancy firm I worked for was absorbed into a larger firm.

There were 6 qualified accountants who dealt directly with the clients (including the owner of the firm); 4 men and 2 women. If you got a phone call and the person couldn't remember the full name of the accountant they dealt with it was easier to identify the women; 1 was 30 years older than the other.

The men were a different story. If they remembered the first name, they'd usually ask for Paul*, at which point we'd ask which of the 3 Pauls they dealt with. OK, he had grey hair. Still all 3. They'd then say the one with glasses, at which point we'd have to ask for more identifying features as 2 wore glasses permanently. OK, he was tall and skinny. Great, that's the 2 who wear glasses... It's amazing how many people remembered the full name after the first couple of times around this game of guess-the-accountant.

* Name changed to protect the not so innocent.

[purple]

I grew up in the freight industry all truck drivers are Peter or Mike. There a still a lot of people I only know by there nicknames.

My last name is uncommon, at least in New Zealand. My first name became popular about 5 years after I was born.

[SailorMan]

Interesting. In my case, I wish I had a common last name. Don't get me wrong, I like having a "unique" last name, but I hate the fact that you can find out a lot of personal info with ease. If you google my last name, you can immediately find out all about me, just by skimming the first page. Why? Because there's only 7 people in the US with my last name, all family. This makes me especially nervous about using social media, because of just how easy it is to pull up my information.

This is the age of the internet. I wish I was born with a common last name.

Both my first and last names are English names, but not common at all. My family came to Virginia in the 1730s, and this branch of the family tree promptly changed the spelling of an uncommon English surname to something truly unique. At the last census, there were just under 100 families in the U.S. with this surname, all related to me, in some way.

I'm the fifth in my family line to have my first name, which is an Old Testament name which, believe me, was much more common five generations ago, during the Civil War era. Think of names like Jedidiah (of Jed Clampett fame), or Hezekiah, or the like. I'm used to people totally slaughtering the pronunciation of both of my names, so I generally go by 'Bud.'

And unique? I'm sure that I'm the only person in the world with my combination of first and last names. It's my name, and it was also my father's and grandfather's. Though, if you looked-up my name on Wikipedia, you'd come to the page of a popular singer from the 30s and 40s -- and also a member of this singer's band, a cousin of my grandfather's, who was named after the same ancestor as my grandfather was.

Myself -- not so famous.