I read an article from “Penelope Trunk” (the cynicism of the quotation marks will become apparent shortly) titled: My Name Is Not Really Penelope
With the kind of communication technologies we enjoy in the modern age, the world has really become a much smaller place. You come to realise that human beings are pretty much the same wherever you go (or broadcast from). You realise there are certain universal truths. Oh, and you realise parents don’t exhibit much creativity when selecting names for their children.
I became somewhat disillusioned with my name a few years ago when I devoted an unhealthy amount of time going through the some 328,000 results that came up when I Googled my own name. John Laceys were a dime a dozen… apparently. (Even with my own name dot com domain name I still only make an appearance on the 7th page of such search results.) I compiled a list of the most notable examples of people who shared my name and gave it the immodest title, “Will The Real John Lacey Please Stand Up?”
It seems quite funny to me that I was searching for “the real” John Lacey. Almost every English text we were subjected to in the course of high school were “coming of age” type stories, deeply entrenched in self-discovery. I, on the other hand, actually felt I had a pretty good concept of self; I was just trying to differentiate myself from the hundreds of thousands of people who were identified in the same way I was.
The frustration continued when I felt the need to join MySpace. I couldn’t register the username johnlacey as somebody else had beaten me to it. With a good deal of righteous indignation I instead opted for therealjohnlacey, and included a little tirade about not being able to register the name I wanted because “some jerk” had already taken it. (The aforementioned “jerk” subsequently contacted me – though, all in all, took it with great humour.)
Another person contacted me via MySpace to assure me that I couldn’t be “the real” John Lacey, since their father was actually the real one. Apparently he was a war hero of some description.
Even my parents have confessed they had great difficulty naming me in the first place. They were trying very hard not to name me after anyone in particular in our family tree, out of a desire not to offend anyone else who thereby didn’t become a name sake. (Though they mustn’t have delved too deeply. There was at least one notable John Lacey on my father’s side.)
Initially my mother wanted to call me Jonathan, although my father objected on grounds that are so ironic and hilarious that I dare not even include them here.
My home town of Nowra is not a large place. North Nowra is an even smaller place. Though it quickly became apparent I wasn’t even the only John Lacey to live there. We made this fascinating discovery when our local chemist became very concerned to see a 12 year old being prescribed heart medication. Of course that medication wasn’t for me, it was for the other John Lacey. No relation, and only a handful of streets away from where I lived!
I would love to know if anyone else has had experiences like these.
