Are you Googleable?

Jun 15th 2005

The quest for name individuality is a common theme I hear from parents. Change is accelerating, the name pool is expanding, and parents are treating "popular" as a dirty word. It tells us a lot about our culture and values. But it also tells us something about our technology.

Most of us share our full name with others -- sometimes hundreds of others. A generation ago, that seldom mattered. So there's another Sarah Stubblefield three states over, who cares? But in a networked, searchable world, our name twins are suddenly closer than ever before.

Type "Laura Wattenberg" into Google and you'll get a pure dose of baby name wizardry. Wattenberg, though, is my married name. I was born Laura Miller. Google that name and you'll find results for hundreds of women, including a Salon editor and the current mayor of Dallas. I'm sure my old single self is in there somewhere, but who could find her?

For some tech-focused families, "Googleability" is now a prime baby-naming requirement. If a full name yields too many Google results, they toss it out. Many of these parents are reacting to their own frustration with mistaken identity. Once you've been one of seven Tom Wilsons in your company directory, you learn to crave the clarity of a unique name. For others, a Googleable name is a fashion statement. They'll even make sure a .com domain name is available for their baby-to-be, like the ultimate vanity license plate.

There are undeniable practical benefits to a unique name. The Boston Globe recently chronicled the woes of a man whose driver's license was revoked because he shared a name with a repeat vehicular offender. In my case, back in my Laura Miller days I once moved to a new town and started getting phone calls intended for another Laura Miller. Judging from the nature of the calls, that other Laura offered certain...er...personal services I wasn't about to provide. As a Wattenberg, mistaken identity is a thing of the past. Arguably, there's also a psychological lift from feeling that you're not just one of an indistiguishable crowd.

Yet there's an upside to anonymity, too. It's called privacy. Kids growing up today are leaving a trail of information footprints, opening stray details of their lives to the public. The same unique moniker that sets you apart from the crowd makes you and your past instantly trackable. Even innocuous aspects of your life can be personal, and over the long run you might not want everyone you meet to be able to learn about them with a single click.

How about those old college party photos? Picture a new boyfriend 5 years down the line Googling the snapshots of you with with your old boyfriend...and the one before him, and the one before him. Or think of a prospective employer (because they will Google you, you can be certain.) Did they need to see that picture of the tattoo on your rear end before meeting you? Worse yet, did they need to know all about your religious, political and sexual inclinations? It's none of their business. But thanks to a long-forgotten messageboard post, or organizational newsletter, or friend's blog, it may be there for the reading.

No new parent ever dreams of the future and thinks, "I want to make sure my child will be able to hide his tracks!" But we do think about protecting our kids, including protecting them from kinds of material they can find online. It's also worth thinking about the kinds of material they can put online. The more distinctive your child's name, the stronger the trail she'll leave behind, for whomever might be looking. A young Sirrenity Stubblefield should learn to think hard before she posts.

06/15/2005, 8:45PM

Comments

By Anonymous (not verified)

June 16, 2005 12:20 AM

I went the other direction when I married, going from a unique name (and my first name is Jennifer!) to one I couldn't get an email address that even remotely resembled. It puts a certain bit more pressure on: if you don't get off your duff and be the first to make your name your own, then you may not get to use your own name as an author, musician, actor, or whatever. I must admit, though, that even with my for-better-or-for-worse anonymity, I will never cease to appreciate having a surname that people can spell.

By Kateri (not verified)

June 16, 2005 12:44 AM

Oh yes. I married into a very obviously French surname which has retained its French pronunciation. I have learned to answer to anything remotely close, including all variations of possible mis-pronunciations. I have had to argue with people: Me:"XXXX is my name." Other person: "No it's not."Pronouncing my name has been met with the "Oh my, aren't we fancy?" response. But the worst has to be when my husband was hassled about the name on an election day BY A POLLWORKER at the height of the "Down with everything French" idiocy in the US a couple years ago.This is certainly off-topic from first names, but thanks for letting me vent!

By Anonymous (not verified)

June 16, 2005 4:38 PM

I really enjoyed this post. Partly, because I have a name in mind, so just today I thought "hey, why don't I google it." I did the first and middle name, and it was sort of a relief to see other people had used it. I think the names have a decent flow together, and this gave me a second opinion without having to reveal the choice. When I read what you wrote about people googling for uniqueness my next thought was, that's interesting, my impulse after going to Google's page was to do the first and last name to see if anyone else came up. And, then I liked that there were some other hits. Maybe because I follow civil liberty issues, I value privacy and blending in a little. But, I can't say I thought about it at all much before I went to Google's home page. I may have felt differently if there were 100s of pages of hits instead of 5 pages. Or, if the names weren't chosen because we're inclined to use family names and I can't very well change the pool to pick from!

By Anonymous (not verified)

June 16, 2005 5:25 PM

I never thought about this! Fascinating!

By Anonymous (not verified)

June 16, 2005 5:56 PM

i have a uniquely spelled first name: Tiffanie, and a very unique last name. If I google myself, I come up with about 4 pages, all about me. And I've always wanted to marry someone with a last name like Miller, so people can pronounce it and spell it. But only recently, I have really seen the benefit of having a unique name, if I were looking for a family member - every reference to our name anywhere, is someone from our very small family. But I still crave an easy pronunciation and logical spelling!

By Thumbelina (not verified)

June 16, 2005 5:57 PM

Interesting post. I recently googled my favorite baby name & found a bunch of artistic websites selling crafts; unflattering song lyrics and one website about a little girl with the name. It's certainly interesting to see what you get.

By Rhiana (not verified)

June 17, 2005 6:50 AM

I have a favorite passtime that is to Google my name and the names of my friends. I have a fairly uncommon name- Rhiana (Ree-anna), and when I google myself, I get tons of fantasy story pages, with unicorns and witches and things of that nature. Second to the fantasy pages, are pages about an actress, a rugby player, and then me.

By Char (not verified)

June 18, 2005 3:12 AM

My name is common enough that I've never been able to find a page about me by googling. A gospel singer with my name always comes up (she's pretty decent too.:) ) I always found that quite comforting, I value privacy. Though I seem to remember my brother getting arrested because he had the same name-down to the middle initial-of somone who was wanted. That was less than cool. Still I think I'd rather have a regular, 'ungoogleable' name...

By anamika (not verified)

June 18, 2005 6:48 AM

I was the only girl with my name in our class...I felt very special. Then one day, a new girl came, with not only the same name but also the same birthday and near identical surname and nickname!!There was almost no reason left (in my life) to be happy anymore!!Now I have two beautiful kids and I also happen to blog about 'names' at..www.nbc.typepad.com/beautifulhindubabynames

By Anonymous (not verified)

June 20, 2005 4:48 PM

Before I made the final decision on my children's names, I googled the first name and last name combination to find out whether there are any unflattering namesakes. Also, I googled the first name along with the word "baby" to find out what kind of people are giving the name to their children. Finally, I googled the first name alone to see how many porn sites appeared.

By Anonymous (not verified)

June 20, 2005 8:38 PM

My husband's last name isn't common so it really doesn't matter what name we choose, it will not be a name they could maintain anonymity with. Even pairing Jennifer with it didn't yield many results.

By Andrea (not verified)

June 21, 2005 4:27 AM

My first name is fairly common, although I don't know a lot of Andreas, but my last name is very uncommon for the United States, so if you type in my first and last into Google, you mostly come up with my blog, some star chip thingie, and lots of stuff in Slovak that you can't decipher, so that's kinda fun. But there's someone with my name who lives in New York state and works as a guidance counsellor in a high school. Weird.

By Kellie Oleson (not verified)

June 21, 2005 1:06 PM

Yeah, google my name (maiden name only, sans my newly-hyphenated post-wedding name) and about 29872908375 pages show up. Most of them are porn. All riiiight! And I have a very normal name: Kelly [insert Germanic last name]. Never in my life did I ever imagine a porn star would have the same name. I am sure this causes some interesting discussions when long-lost schoolmates google me :-)

By Anonymous (not verified)

June 22, 2005 7:34 PM

I googled a friend who has a very unusual first name. Searching on her first name and her college yields lots of pages about her. I also find any mention of her that her friends made in their blogs. She tries to be careful about letting her name get on the internet because of this. Not enough anonymity for me! On the other hand, it can be very hard to hide from determined searchers even if you have a common name.I wonder how the trend toward names with meaning (e.g., Cadence) will mesh with these attempts at google uniqueness. It might be hard to find yourself properly on google if your name is an English word (esp. for people whose surname is also an English word).

By Anonymous (not verified)

June 23, 2005 7:08 PM

Hi, Laura,I have an unrelated question I'm hoping you could respond to. I've noticed that some very gender-specific names, such as Walter, Susan, Jennifer, and Barbara, all have little spikes in the Voyager where they were given to babies of the opposite gender. These spikes seem to coincide with periods when the name was very popular. Do you think that this is likely because of clerical error? If a name is that popular, there's an increased likelihood that the wrong gender will be recorded for it, and with really popular names, the error rate is numerically high enough to show up on the graph--? Thanks,Amanda

By Anonymous (not verified)

June 24, 2005 1:03 PM

Re. Amanda's question:See http://www.babynamewizard.com/namevoyagerfaq.html#oddities - it explains how errors occurred.

By Imogen (not verified)

June 26, 2005 7:42 PM

i seem to have a unique name. when I put it into google, all the results it comes up with are the articles I write for my friend's website. After that, there's a page for my uncle's legal firm. Although my first name - Imogen - is growing in popularity, my surname is an unusual spelling of a name that's not too common to start with. I don't think my name is particularly outlandish, but I quite enjoy not having the same name as anybody else. Although I'll bear that in mind about the tattoo on my rear end...

By Anonymous (not verified)

June 29, 2005 11:19 PM

my MIL is a Laura Miller!I marvel at my googleability all the time. I grew up with a full name that seems like it wouldn't be common, but is, so many folks think all the listings are me. But when I google my old name I can't even find myself in there. My married name is one that we made up, so it's fun watching the google entries build up from scratch.

By Sara (not verified)

August 14, 2005 5:05 PM

A question for Anamika - I tried to visit your beautifulhindinames website but the URL did not work - can you repost that URL? Thank you!

By Anonymous (not verified)

January 15, 2006 6:18 AM

I knew someone that was uncomfy with her friends randomly stumbling on her posts at a mothering message board so she edited her old posts to remove her kids names - a bit too much of a "tin foil and black helicopters" reaction to me

By Anonymous (not verified)

January 26, 2006 12:20 AM

I have a very unusual fn and also an unusual ln. When I google both my fn and ln, only posts made by myself come up. (There are some others with my fn but not my ln or my ln but not my fn, but they are not by me.)But those post are nothing which I think I must hide for future employers or boy friends (should I divorce my dh). I don't have my photo on the internet. And most of my posting is done under pseudonyms.So I would not avoid an unusual name for my children b/c of Google. It is a well known fact that you must be careful about what you reveal about yourself on the internet.

By Anonymous (not verified)

February 27, 2008 1:03 AM

I have a very common first and last name (and even middle name) - there are zillions of "me." I find it comforting, actually, not to be easily Googleable. And when I do post on a blog or whatever with my son's more unusual name, I always distort it (with periods or whatever) so that it doesn't come up.

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