What's in a name?

My name is Alison Wheeler — Alison Mary Wheeler, in full actually — and Google alerts regularly sends me 'news' that I've just joined facebook or some other online website that they've crawled.

Except it (usually) isn't *me* that they have come across but one of my many namesakes. When I created one of my earliest personal websites I included a page of links to other 'Alison Wheeler's and I've received telephone calls mistaking me for one of the others (and presumably vice-versa) which even resulted in an interview on BBC Radio and Television news about the issues of having the same name as someone else. Not that it is really that unusual to have the same name as someone else in the world, or even one's own country, as someone else …

Anyway, today I decided to recognise this in a proper "Web 2.0" way. I created a new facebook group called … "My name is Alison Wheeler" ! I also searched out many of the others already on facebook to invite them along and some have also 'friended' me, which is quite weird getting a message "Dear Alison Wheeler, Alison Wheeler would like to friend you" sort of thing!

"Alison is now friends with Alison Wheeler, Alison Wheeler and Alison Wheeler"