People Confusion (fluff alert)

Jesse commented to my previous post that the name of new INETA speaker 'Jon Box' was "way too close" to 'Don Box'. (he then went on to mention a BillG confusion). Of course, there are at least a couple of other 'Don's in our small industry - though perhaps none that are commonly referred to as "the Don" - but it does highlight the potential for confusion (not only that, but Jon Box is a coworker of similar-sounding Dan Fox). Maybe, like the Screen Actors Guild, we need more clearly unique names? Maybe Jon should change his name to Johanne. <g>

All of this reminds me of a "Windows-NT Intranet Solutions" (egad, what a name!) conference in Tokyo in 1995. I was walking across the show lobby with a couple of friends about 1/2 hour after Bill'Gs keynote. I was in the center - bloviating about something, to which my friends were listening as if it were truly important - and several Japanese attendees ran up and asked for my autograph! Cool! Nobody's ever asked for that before! Very flattering...

Except...hmm maybe they were confused. I pointed out that I was not Bill - indicating my speaker badge with my own name on it - and they said "oh...yes...we knew that...may we still have your autograph?". They then turned to all the people I was with and asked for their autographs as well. Clearly, they'd made a mistake but they didn't want to embarass any of us by excluding someone.

So, a unique name isn't enough to guarantee uniqueness. You also have to not look even remotely like anyone else. <g>