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

Dave Gorman was known for it; finding other people with his name. Now it's easy to achieve through networking sites like Facebook. I've had lots of people with my name want to be 'friends' just because they share my name, so I assume it must happen quite a lot. If so, what is this phenomenon called?

Has it got a name? If not, can we name it? I vote for gormaning!


Geggs

It's called * 'It's a rainy sunday afternoon, I'm feeling bored, really bored....I know I'll look for someone on facebook with the same name as me, that'll pass a rainy half hour..and might give me a bit of cheerio for a bit'*

There is nobody else in the world with my real life name.

It's called * 'It's a rainy sunday afternoon, I'm feeling bored, really bored....I know I'll look for someone on facebook with the same name as me, that'll pass a rainy half hour..and might give me a bit of cheerio for a bit'*


Well, that'll never fit on a badge, will it?

Googling your own name is called "ego-surfing". As for contacting people who share your name, solely for that reason - I totally agree, that simply has to be called Gormaning.

My fiance did that recently, and asked the others on FB with the same name to be his friend. At least one accepted. But he's now regretting the decision as he has absolutely nothing in common with this other fella.

Gormaning

I got the idea from Mrs Zen/agcB, not that she needs any MORE credit for good ideas, but I have two other people with the same name on my friends list. I had to delete a third one after he turned out to be a foul-mouthed misogynistic chav.

B

South America is full of women with my RL name, as is Spain, I think.
My Spanish isn't sufficient to get in touch, though.

There's a lot of us in the Carribean region so my dad told me. I'm thinking we may have been colonial plantation owners and all that implies

We are talking about full names, yes? Not just first names?

broe jr started a group on facebook for people who share his name, which is a bit sad as I was really trying to go for something unique when we named him. (Totally failed on that score, his first name was the 11th most popular name the year he was born). It's gotten him into a bit of trouble tho, when his dad or step-mom see an inappropriate post made by "him" that wasn't really by him

I am relatively certain that I am the only one of me, tho. Since I have a very unusual first name it's few and far between that I find anyone else that shares it. I did discover several years ago that there was another one of me with my maiden name that lived back in the early 1800s, and found last year that there is another one of me in my husband's genealogy, but since his mom was the only sister in his family his surname is different from the rest of the family (which means the other me has the other surname).

Always fun to find more, though

I get quite enough about other preople with my name, thank you very much.

There is another me, who got in touch via twitter while trying to find other versions or her (or me, this could get confusing). Turned out we had a couple of similar interests at first glance, had a few interesting chats online, probably now count as distant friends/good aquaintances.

Couple of months ago, Linkedin suggested her to me as a contact (turns out we're more similar than just our names and a couple of interests, we work in similar industries too, and have some mutual contacts) which now means the update section gets very confusing as when it says 'Rockhound' has connected with someone else, or joined a group I get very concerned I'm leading a double life and am slightly amnesiac to boot, when in fact it's the other Rockhound, not me

The all new slimline Beatrice


Well..apart from his name!!!!

There are people who try to keep their names 'off the grid' as much as possible which is near the opposite of being able to be Gormaned...I think we should call that 'Giggsing'.

My maiden name used to be a googlewhack and still only gives 19 results, one of which includes a book by my mother. If I put it in quotes it can't find anything or anyone. That's me. Ms Giggs.

The name I had when I was previously married was unusual, and when I gormaned, I befriended two or three lads on FB with it, but it did get confusing, and I didn't like the txtpk lol. I still feel a vague and auntly interest in them. But it got a bit creepy so I stopped. In it's full version, if I google it, there are less than 20 results, all me mainly in 192, pipl, and plaxo.

My new name now I'm Mrs Zen gives 8,000+ returns in quotes in its short form, but in its long form there's me, failing to do the Moonwalk in Edinburgh, donating money to Bliss, and commenting on the NHS reforms.

Interesting.

I´m the only one in the world with my exact name as far as I know. However I did find out there´s a guy in Sweden who is called the same as me, except his first name is the Swedish version of the name. That did make me feel a bit less like a unique snowflake.

There was a website some years ago that was created as part of a UCL research project. It promoted a good (now misplaced) hootoo Conversation.

The nearest thing left to it now appears to be someone's attempt to recreate it from a personal copy:
http://www.britishsurnames.co.uk/about.php

The original had maps showing regional distributions of names and also a fairly bizarre sociological profiling tool (called Mosaic I seem to remember) that told you something about the lifestyle and circumstances of your ancestors. I think at least one Researcher (Sitting on the Stair) named herself after one of its many categories.

This latest site is sadly lacking in some of that functionality, but will at least give you an indication of your surname's rarity if you type it into the search box. It tells me that mine is unknown (though I remember the UCL site gave a count of 70-odd bearers, with no living examples with my forename).

The "Buy me a Drink" feature is nearly as strange as the Mosaic used to be.

If I do a facebook search for my name, I get two white, middle-aged men who frankly could be me, but aren't, and four young black American women. Which is a bit surprising.