h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Having recently read the book of the same title I decided to do a quick ego-search on the net and find out if I had any name-sakes out there. I do, several in fact.

1) An "IS Team Leader" from New Zealand.
2) A Canadian who wrote to a BDSM message board informing all that he lived with his sub. I didn't even realise that the Canadians had a navy.
3) A "wil-
liam graves".
4) What is the inscription in Trevor and Liam's graves?

Do you have any name-sakes out there?

Liam.

If I use my full name I am absolutely exclusive.

NR Doll

Apparently I share my name with:

A financial Adviser from Princeton, New Jersey
A project manager for a construction company in Nantucket, MA
A guy who runs an unofficial Donovan fan club
and an M.D. in London at the turn of the century who wrote his cool poem about the criminalisation of opium!!

Opium Eater's Soliloquy
-----------------------

I'd been cheered up, at my chandoo-shop, for years at least two-score,
To perform my daily labour, and was never sick or sore,
But they said this must not be;
So they've passed a stern decree,
And they've made my chandoo-seller shut his hospitable door.

If I'd only cultivated, now, a taste for beer and gin,
Or had learnt at pool or baccarat my neighbour's coin to win,
I could roam abroad o' nights,
And indulge in these delights,
And my soul would not be stigmatized, as being steeped in sin.

But mine's a heathen weakness for a creature-comfort far
Less pernicious than their alcohol, more clean than their cigar,
They have sent their howlings forth
From their platform in the North,
And 'twixt me and my poor pleasure have opposed a righteous bar.

I am:

Director of Administration at McManion & Scotland
The seller of a house to Barbara Greeder for $59,500
The mother of someone's ancestor
A scholarship awarded to Amanda Bernier and Lesley Anderson, in the amount of $500

That should be anough to satisfy my stalkers - luckily I couldn't find the real me. (an improvement as a few years back the only result for my name on a yahoo search was my email address and course at uni)

I seem to be

someone who writes about chickens
another person who writes about Contemporary Issues in
Early Childhood
An awful lot of people who were in North America during the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries

I'm a (fortunately) minor hollywood film star. And I was in Friends (briefly). Which makes me a guilty of crimes against humanity. Beat that....

Otto

Hmm, interesting - my namesake is a top physics undergraduate in Alberta; a chemistry student in New York; a member of UCC computer society, a student in Trinity College Dublin; a member of the Italian Toastmasters club; somebody who played a game of golf in France; a drummer for a local band; an avid soccer fan; a player with gazillions of Irish hurling and football clubs; a marine cadet; a university sociologist; an Irish software designer; and get this, somebody who got in trouble for making 200 nuisance calls in the west of Ireland...

And here was me thinking that my name was fairly unusual...

Apparently I spoke at a JavaOne conference in 2001 (which, spookily enough is actually the kind of thing I do, but this particular time it wasn't me), a 600 racer (not entirely sure what that is - looks like some kind of hotrod series), I'm a 20 year old student author in the Midlands, a guitarist from North Wales, director of communications at Nottingham Trent University, (then Google actually gives me a short string of links which really are me), I write up reports of women's soccer in Singapore, I'm a research fellow in robotics at Wolverhampton University, I'm the chair of the EMMAN Management Group at JANET, (then it's me for real again), I'm an author of a book on the fashion industry, I'm a doctor specializing in Sjogren's syndrome, a Welsh darts player, a prize-winning architect, an TV researcher, a Welsh cyclist, a Latics player, a partner at a foam plastic manufacturing concern.

And then I got bored.

A quick Google search reveals quite a few people, all with either my exact name, or the assorted variations in spelling.

I'm a member of the Bayside ravens gridiron club
I wrote the award winning book 'English Passengers'
I'm a touring car driver
In 1766 i was a protestant in a place called Derryloran
And, apparently, i look like this - http://www.sjhs1977.com/images/memory/matt_neal77_sm.jpg

Apparently I'm:

- A of Economics at the University of Melbourne
- The Mananging Director of a dot com startup (which I'm aiming to be myself eventually)
- A horse racing journo
- A police officer in Provo, Utah

EEEEEEK!!!! I did a search on google and my name came top of the list and yes it WAS me.However the site does not seem to make any connection with my avatar at that site so I shan't panic too much.Frightened the whatits out of me for a while though.

Incog.

Apparently I have written a paper on estimating long-term erosion of an active tectonic setting using cosmogenic nuclides in the
tectonically active San Bernardino Mountains, California.

I also left Scotland 16 years ago and moved to Johannesburg, but remain a Stirling Albion fan.

Trying :

"firstname lastname" - 63,100 Google hits
"shortened_firstname lastname" - 20,000 Google hits
"firstname middlename lastname" - 1 Google hit (*not* me, in some kind of genealogy list)

Out of interest, I went looking for references to a paper *I did* write on electrocardiology many years ago (just using firstname & lastname), and found 3 hits, all for people who aren't me.

No exact matches for my name, except for one post to a message board that I made many many moons ago when I was a newb. There's people who have my first name and people who have my last, but none who share the two ^.^ Yay for indubiduals!

I'm a professor of oral pathology
Then I'm a manufacturer of ski equipment for disabled people
Then Google picks up actual me

Sprout

English Pasengers is a great book, I highly recommend it.
Anyhoo, bunging my name in Google unsurprisingly comes up with bucketloads about a round the world traveller, often by microlight. I was somewhat peeved to note that the H2G2 article on him only made it to the second page of results; A668586
I finally turned up on page ten in a list of old university students long after articles in Japanese and the Election Results for Milton Keynes.

i couldn't find any matches for my name .... but there's an entire town (almost a city) in british columbia named after my family name, with a mountain and everything

how is that? i feel like a walton!

Google reckons it has 20,000 matches for my name. Those I've read are mostly (long) dead Puritan Americans. The sixth one on the FIRST page, however, is me.

Google gives:
Richard Smeltzer (exact phrase): 22 (incl an electrical designer and engineer and several vicars)
Rich Smeltzer: 5
Rick Smeltzer: 8 (one a flight instructor in Indiana)
Ricky Smeltzer: 1 (apparently got screwed out of some property and contemplated suicide )
Dick Smeltzer: 3 (one a vicar on Long Island)
All other combinations tried: 0

I don't think I can manage even Dave's golden number of 54. I'll admit those are the numbers after Google filters out "similar"results, but still, about a dozen of them were me, so probably other people are listed more than once.

I began to look for my namesake but gave up because I couldn't be bothered to work out what their jobs were. I had something like: a director of a historical society, HM ambassador and an Australian politician.

More interestingly though the last entry against my name was a "SportsTalk" item sent to the BBC for a question about who Alex Ferguson should buy next. I'm quite often spouting off on these points of view trying to see my name up in lights. HOWEVER when I clicked across to this one, I hadn't written it!! I don't remember writing it, it wasn't my style, I didn't write those types of things in April 2001. Curiouser and curiouser !!!!

BBS