If a person became well known for commiting a heinous crime and had a similar name to yours, would you change your name?

Lol! No. Actually, I think it would be a great ice-breaker for parties or conventions. It might even help me meet people.

I for one think it would be great…no one would fuck with me ever again.

Nah. I’d just continue to do my best to create a better association for the name.

Well, obviously, i’d have to get on Maury and discuss my pain first.~

no. i’d just keep on trucking.

My parents had agreed on the name Orenthal James Simpson for me. Certain events caused them to change their minds.

Not my name. There are probably hundreds of thousands of us around the country.

I always wonder if there are still people out there named Hitler. Surely he wasn’t the only one with the name, but I’ve never stumbled across it. Is it just so stained by the horror of the holocaust that all living Hitlers changed their names? Or was he somehow just the last one? I’d google it, but I’d hate sifting through the results and it might look suspicious on the company servers.

No I wouldn’t do it. My name is so much a part of my personal identity. Although I’m sure it would be a huge pain in the arse for awhile to share that name and to have such negativity attached to it.

I would never change my name, but then again thats easy for me to say because I’m about 101% positive nobody has the same first and last name as me. If I ever was forced to change my name though, I would change it to Angus. Fyi

@gussnarp – One of his nephews lives on Long Island. He’s old now, of course. But married, had kids and lived his life. After changing his surname.

The last person you will usually be confused with is a famous serial killer.

@gussnarp I don’t know about his relatives, but sadly the name is alive and well.

I might change my name if it was really associated with something awful. Or maybe start introducing myself as a nickname or something.

@Likeradar Well, that’s just wrong. But let’s just ponder the ramifications of people who happen to have the name, not people who are given it by twisted parents.

@Likeradar Why, why, why, would you name a kid that? I get that it’s “just a name” but they’re just asking for attention and problems for the kid later on.

This actually happened to me. A man with the same first and last names as me kidnapped a young girl and held her captive for a very long time. It was a big national news story for a few days, and my family and friends got a few laughs out of it. Luckily, it’s the young girl’s name that the media has remembered. The kidnapper’s name (and my own) has mostly been forgotten. It helped that he went by a strange religious alias.

@Likeradar : I’ve read about that family before. They say that they “just like the name” and has nothing to do with racism, but the evidence of the other kids’ names suggest otherwise. What a couple of douche bags.

Fellow I know of by the name of Dan White has just tried to live it down but is sick of being asked about Twinkies.

@Jeruba : LOL

Reminds me of this Office Space dialogue:

Samir: No one in this country can ever pronounce my name right. It’s not that hard: Na-ghee-na-na-jar. Nagheenanajar.
Michael Bolton: Yeah, well, at least your name isn’t Michael Bolton.
Samir: You know, there’s nothing wrong with that name.
Michael Bolton: There was nothing wrong with it… until I was about twelve years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys.
Samir: Hmm… well, why don’t you just go by Mike instead of Michael?
Michael Bolton: No way! Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.

@se_ven: I was just getting ready to type that until I scroll down and you, the very last entry, already did it. lol

@se_ven -

“We’re gonna be getting rid of these people here…first, Samir Naga….Naga….well Naga work here anymore!”

@poofandmook yeah, I scanned through the responses hoping no one had done it yet ;)

wondering if anyone named Ted Gein or Fred Gein has ever been overcharged for anything since about 1958

@Noel_S_Leitmotiv are you saying you were born after 1994?

Rumpelstiltskin?

i was about to type out ‘no way. why should i change when the other person is the one who killed people?’ when i stopped to read @se_ven‘s office space dialogue and realized i was almost quoting it.

@eponymoushipster perhaps they didn’t want to name their son after a… a… a.. football player. shudders so gross.

I wouldn’t mind changing my name. I hate my first name, it’s such an “I’m the annoying younger brother on a crappy sitcom” name. My last name, I don’t have strong feelings for either way.

@Sarcasm @eponymoushipster: I’m kidding.

@Sarcasm: Isn’t your name Dr. Sarc Asm III Esq. ?

@dalepetrie : I’m giving you lurve even though I don’t know the reference. :)

Yeah well the original gut answer is always “no” but I think that if my name was Jack Hitler (I remember someone mentioning a family with that name in the US), then…yeah, I’d probably change it. I don’t think I could take it. Might keep something slightly more obscure like Musolini maybe, or some generic name like Bundy. There’s also Al Bundy, so I’d be fine with that one.

I wouldn’t change my name. If somebody has a problem with it, then I can make up some stories.

Well both my names are kinda rare so I don’t have to worry about that too much, but I do share a last name with a Yankees baseball player and some people would consider that villainous.

Probably.

No, simply because that was still my identity and I wouldn’t allow something like that to effect me so profoundly.

I was going to name my child Blanket Jackson….

I notice that no one has admitted to having the same surname as Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden.

@bea2345 my plumber is Frank bin Laden. oddly, he only comes when I drop a dirty bomb.~

@eponymoushipster : You’re a card… :o)

@eponymoushipster – I stand corrected.

I’m so glad I wasn’t named Kanye West..

@Noel_S_Leitmotiv http://www.cracked.com/blog/what-if-kanye-west-is-retarded/

LOL!!

It doesn’t take murder or other heinous crime to avoid using your name. I don’t use my last name because that side of the family is associated with a towing company, embezzlement, frequent bankruptcies and drug dealing not to mention the attempt to open a strip joint.
Sorry but my last name is never every spoken. I go by Miss and my nickname.