“Hey! You know John Smith!? …Oh, wait. I’m thinking of a different John Smith.” This isn’t a rarity, but it does happen. When two people share the same first and last names it can get quite confusing. There are a few people that I personally know that have the same names and then there are people who I’ve met who have the same name as famous people. John Smith, for example, is the 2nd most common full name in America. Now take my name, Ian Huntley. How many Ian Huntleys have you met or even heard of? Though there are not many in the U.S. or maybe even in the world, there is one other Ian Huntley out there who has made quite a name for himself… or for both us.
When I was 13 years old, my older brother came home from college with an Internet article that he printed out. One day, out of boredom, he was just looking up family names on the web and entered my name into a Google search. The results were quite interesting, with the news article heading, “Ian Huntley Kills Two Innocent Girls.” Shocked, I began reading about a story that would forever cast a shadow over my name.
In August of 2002, there was a high profile police case called, “The Soham Murders,” in which two girls were murdered by their school’s caretaker, Ian Huntley. This occurred in a small town in England called Soham, Cambridgeshire. I’m not going to go into specifics about the case, but it was extremely popular (even making history) in the UK and claimed much media attention. Don’t worry. Huntley was found and is currently serving a life sentence. I thought it was really interesting, but didn’t really pay much attention to it.
Years later, at the age of 17, I joined Facebook. Almost immediately, I began receiving friend requests from random people, all located in the United Kingdom. At first I didn’t understand how these people could possibly know me. Eventually I got a private message in my inbox, which clarified the reasoning for these requests. The message was a sarcastic comment that read along the lines of, “I thought you were dying in prison you vile piece of s#*t!” Suddenly everything made sense and I immediately knew that I was in for an interesting Internet ride. And I was right.
Since joining Facebook in 2007, I’ve been periodically receiving friend requests and messages from English humorists that find it funny to knock on a Yankee with the same name as a famous child killer. I don’t respond to any of them, but the messages are very vulgar, and some, quite unique. One message was written as a bad joke: “What do you get when you take one killer, add 2 innocent girls…” Well, you can figure out the rest. To this day, I still get requests and messages from people from England, but I save face and just laugh about it with friends. It’s actually somewhat fun searching for me. On YouTube, there are vLogs of people talking about how terrible of a person Ian Huntley is. There’s even a video from one of Russell Brand’s (Katy Perry’s husband and co-star of Get Him to the Greek) stand up shows where he talks about Ian Huntley. Yeah, we’re pretty tight.
Featured on Oprah a few months ago, people with same names were interviewed in a segment called, “Same Name, Different Fate.” One man’s world was turned upside down when a police officer murderer was arrested and happened to have the same name as this University scholar. Wes Moore actually wrote a book about him overcoming the bad rep that came with the name. I was thinking I should’ve been on that episode!
I like my name and am proud of it. I’ve wanted to travel to (or live in) Europe all of my life, but now I’m wondering if the bad rap associated with my name will ever come to bite me in the butt. I promise that I’m not THAT Ian Huntley and hopefully employers (and pretty girls) will note the difference.
If you’re interested in learning more about this story, much can be found online just by searching “Ian Huntley” into Google. You can read the story behind the man featured on Oprah, at this link: http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Two-Men-Named-Wes-Moore-Two-Fates_1/1
Are you interested in your name? Check out www.howmanyofme.com. You can type in any name and find popularity rankings and facts about you or your friend’s names, no matter how unique or general they are. It’s a great way to kill some time or boredom.