Thursday, April 30, 2009

1 reason why you don't want to share your name with anyone else

1. You don’t want to be ‘the other’. When there are two of you with the same name – be it Eleanor or Tegan or Dwayne – everybody else in the world who happens to know the both of you will certainly find a way to differentiate between you and the other you. The problem is if you end up being ‘the other you’. Allow me to illustrate with a table.

WINNER

LOSER

Funny You

The Other You

Smart You

The Other You

Poet You

The Other You

Jewish You

The Other You

Perfect You

The Other You

Pretty You

The Other You

Lovely You

The Other You








DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHY I HEADED EACH COLUMN THE WAY I DID?

There are no loopholes or exceptions. If you are The Other You you have lost. You are a loser. Because even if your opponent is known as ‘Fat You’ or ‘Bogan You’ or ‘Smelly You’, you will still despair over why there isn’t anything remarkable enough about you to define you in your own right. You will wonder endlessly whether you only exist in relation to the non-other you. If they die, vanish to another land where there are no more yous, will you be gone too?

So I was talking to Tegan the other day.
Cool Tegan?
Nah. The Other Tegan.
Oh.

Really, there’s a substantial argument why children may be called Boat or Frame or Iron. And it’s not because their parents are morons.

6 comments:

murray said...

OMG Other Tegan, this post is most strange. I now christen you Wierd Tegan. You are now a winner.

Harry said...

It's very true. You never want to be 'the other'. I'm lucky that not many people my age are called Harry, but I do often get called the 'other Nuss', you being the original.

murray said...

Interesting conclusion Tugs. In my childhood, and more particularly in my adolescent years, I was not very impressed with neither my firstname nor my surname, because for me, at least at the time, both were uncommom, if not unusual.

But as the years rolled on, the more appreciative I became of this very fact.

murray said...

PS
Oops....A double negative.

Tegan said...

Who have you been hanging around with, Dad? Want to know where you learnt 'OMG'??

You also spelt 'weird' incorrectly. Second oops.

Anonymous said...

What about if you have the same name as someone's pet?

eg.1 Broden. The first thing he said to me was "My dog's name is 'Leena'". He didn't even have to say what we were all thinking which was that 'Leena' was a female dog and therefore a bitch.

eg.2 "Jeffery jumped on the table and ate my dinner." I imagine my cat while you imagine your brother.

What if you have the same name as a brand of women's sanitary item?

ie. 'Freya'

I don't think there is any winning about having different names. I think the best names don't rhyme with things like 'weener'.