googleprint

I'm the only person with my name and I'm glad that I can find all the on-line references to me easily and get any information I don't want public dealt with. I have had a stalker in the past and I am ridiculously careful about this (use middle and maiden name academically, for example). My DH has a very common name, even with our relatively unusual surname, there are a few kicking about and he has to really trawl (on my insistence) to get anything with our address etc removed.

I would go for a name a bit more common than mine (I hate that if you put in my first name and city, you get me) but not too common.

This is a horrible problem for DH.

He has an unusual name - but the only other one on Google is a Canadian convicted paedophile.

I mean, obviously his clients realise that's not him when they look for him online, but it's still cringey.

There are 28 people in the UK with my name - one of them turned in a laudable performance as Nurse Ratched in a production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. I'd rather be unique, I think.

The older DCs - there are thousands of them out there with the same name. The younger DCs have a hybrid of my and DH's surname so are well and truly unique, which they love. But you're right - any minor shoplifting conviction when they're troubled youths and it will haunt them forever.

I thought I had a pretty unusal name but turnsout there is someone with my exact same name (middle name and everything) who is a professor of Geography in America! Oh well, maybe I should pretend to be her! Lol.

Yes!

Well, my family are pretty much ungoogleable, thankfully as our namesakes are quite interesting...

There are loads of 'me', but noone particularly mentionable

DH is a porn star

DD2 is a famous, cocaine snorting supermodel, who happens to live in the next village along from us.

In fact, DD1 is the only one with a respectable namesake who is an Oxford academic.

I'm the only one of me (apart from a long-dead one) and I think it's fab! Combination of unusual first name and very unusual surname. That's why I didn't want to use my husband's surname when we got married. I like being the only one.

With my maiden name and married name combined, I am a googlewhack (and have a few hits for various reasons). My maiden name alone brings up a few hits of other people too, mostly historical.

DS - who has my maiden name in his name but it isn't part of his surname - has a few more hits but not many - DH's surname is pretty uncommon too (but not as rare as mine). But if I were to put his whole name in then he would also be a googlewhack.

My Dad is also a googlewhack.

I quite like this aspect of our names, tbh.

My ds (first and last name) is a real estate agent in Missouri, US.

I'm a googlewhack.

My son is both a laird and a fetish club owner.

On Google-

DS1 is a Famous Director
DS2 is an actor that I havent heard of but his CV has quite alot on it
DD is a Camogie Player

DS had a unique-ish name, or so I thought but a bloke with the same name has just been jailed for bigamy so that's getting quite a bit of press. Don't think anyone could actually confuse him with DS though.

Both DH and I have 'middleing' names. I've never met another person with my name although DH has met one person with his name. But neither of us are John/Jane Smith if that makes sense.

"One of my daughter's friends : at university interview the interviewer said 'I was rather puzzled by the choice of pictures of yourself that you have made public on facebook?' Candidate bursts into tears."

I have very little sympathy with her, to be honest. Making pictures public online is EXCACTLY the same as hanging them outside for everyone to see.

I'm not overly sold on unusual names generally. I gave up a very unusual surname when I got married as it was a pain in the arse always spelling it for people. I'm am however a geek and I know the advantages of having eg Acekicker@email as your mail rather than AcKik678@email, so DS has 2 domains registered in his name (we registered them before his birth but that was because we could buy them in our jammies at the kitchen table rather than needing to get us all dressed and go to the registrar). He also has the 'obvious' gmails registered so that they're there for him to use when he wants.

I'm also a huge believer in not being too free and easy with information on the web, it's much harder to do that if you've got a very unusual name so I don't think I'd deliberately chose names that would score highly on google myself.

The other issue is also being able to create a facebook account or domain name/email address if there are already hundreds others who got there first....

I love how you?re all really rare - desperately wondering what all of your names are.
I don?t think my first name has been out of the top 10 list in the last 30 years, and my surname (married) is as common as muck - I just googled ?most common UK surnames? and it?s in the top 40. If you googled me, you?d never find me?..you?d just find lots of variations of me

There's only one of me in the world :)

There is a yoga teacher and a photographer with my first name, spelled the way it's spelled. There are lots with my surname (not overly common but not unusual either) but none with the combo. I like it, and I have thought of this for naming children.

My brother has a normal first name and a not uncommon-but-not-common Irish surname (great granddad, I'm led to believe) and there's also a photographer with his name, based in San Francisco!

Maybe we've missed our vocations.

I would much rather be findable than not. I've got nothing to hide and only share selective information to a selected group of people (e.g. on facebook). It really is commonsense not to share private information with the rest of the world.

Well there are 3 of me on Facebook - but on Google just about every ref is to me - that's because I have to have a high profile, as part of my job (academic). I need people to contact me, know what I am doing, read my stuff. Daughter has a fairly common name - there are about 45 on Facebook - we gave her a unique middle name, if she needs to distinguish herself - because maybe she too will want to be findable. Son shares his name (I find out now!) only with a fictional Steampunk hero - rather implausibly, given the name. I don't see the worries about being traceable - though obviously our children will need to learn to 'manicure' and police what they make public for all to see.

I wouldn't have said my RL name was particularly unusual, but I do come up on Google and I really, really hate it. I have a youthful misdemeanor of the sort stubbornhubby mentions and it is right there on Google, for all to see, for all eternity.

I have an unusual name, and sometimes it's OK to be google-able. But I came across a site recently which pulls together info from about yuo different places - wasn't too happy about that!