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[stubbornhubby]

my children were named long ago, but if i was naming a child now one of my biggest areas for thought would be : is it better to have an unusual name, so that people can find you on google and facebook, or a 'john smith' type name where you will always be difficult to locate.

there are pros and cons, and I think it's an interesting one.

I have an unusual surname - (less than 500 people in the world it seems) and so every one of my family have unique names, and are easy to find on google and facebook. I think our experience of modern life is shaped quite strongly by this.

I am interested to know if other people debate this, and which side do come down on one? Do you go for a rare name, or a thousands of 'em?

Did this ever occur to you? It doesn't seem to be discussed on MN (or at least I couldn't find it in a search)

I can see lots of benefits of having an ungoogleble name. Your name is not your identity, it's just a small part of who you are. I'd still be me if I were Poinsettia Fortescue-Smythe, I just have a bit more anonymity like this. Which I like, tbh, esp as I'm in a profession where people can and do stalk people pretty often. I've googled and ancestry.com'd the DCs names and there are millions of hits (not them) - I think I'd rather let them be memorable by their actions than their name.

Interesting question. My maiden surname is pretty rare (probably only around 100 living peoplewith this surname) and I am the only one I know of with my first name (and I have been researching my family tree).

My married surname is quite common though, so if I google my married name I come up with quite a few, and consequently ds's name is also not too rare.

I have to say, i really like the idea of having an unusual name, and maybe should have kept my maiden name!

We are easy to find because of unusual surname but I hate this. It creeps me out to think that all and sundry can find out about us so easily.

However, the surname doesn't sound unusual, it sounds quite commonplace, so hopefully any malevolent nutters wouldn't know it was definitely us.

Is handy to get easily rememberable email addresses though.

My name is very much my identity as it is very unusual (both first and surname, although my maiden name was much more common). I am the only me on a Google search and stuff of mine comes up because I have worked in the public sector and attended lots of committee meetings that are routinely released, and I also have some published research (minor stuff). I am very careful about what I say and do in any case, not because of the internet or Google, but because professionally any email I write could be subject to a Freedom of Information request, so it's a habit now. I am on FB but I've locked down all my privacy settings, and again wouldn't publish anything risque or offensive. I've never had anyone contact me as a result of a google search (or FB for that matter)

dh's twitter account comes up first on googling him, which surprised me, but reflects how unusual our surname is (his first name in much more common). There are 8 on FB. ds came up as being born in 1871, and also as some obscure C19 French poet. He has no FB matches, whilst dd has one, and nothing on Google.

Unbelievable!
Not only does someone else have my name, but my kids too!!

DD has an ancient hebrew name that is so rare we have to spell it to everyone we meet, and yet there are several others who have also paired it with our scottish surname!

I don't get why you wouldn't google a name before you gave it to a child...

DD1 has a fairly unusual (we thought) first name, but it is quite catholic, and our surname is quite irish...so there are quite a few of her in America and Ireland. Most famous seems to be a female bodybuilder.

DD2 brings up some americans on a site simaler to this deciding against that name . Also a drummer.

I'm apparently a film director, and DH is a very common name. He is quite proud that his name apparently means "Victory of the people" and our surname means "the dark one" though.

Bloody hell!!!!!
had never entered my head to take account of any of this
at least never worried bout it 14 years ago with dd1!

people aren't considering the trail that an unusual name leaves.

for instance - get your name in the local papers for (say) shoplifting when you are 17 and if you are John Smith if leaves no trace. If you are Phoenix Smith you'll have to put up with people finding it in your googleprint for a very long time.

don't forget that in the modern world every time you go for a job, or interview you get googled.

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.

Yes on the one hand she should have paid more attention to privacy settings, but on the other hand if she'd been Anne Jones then she'd have got away with it.

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!

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.

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 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.

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 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

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'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.

"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.

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.

tammytoby I agree. But if someone else posts stuff about you online then you can't do much about it,

and you might regret the unusual name that means it's inevitably associated with you.

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

I'm a googlewhack.

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

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

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.

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.

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.