Editor’s note: This is a response to O’Gara’s column from last week that condemned a man who coincidentally has the same name as a University student.
Meet Hunter Moore: He isn’t a nasty piece of work — he’s actually a rather amiable guy. As Gore Vidal might put it, he’s near perfect in his morality, or as much as a mere mortal can be. You, or Margaret Thatcher, could say that Moore has a positive attraction to principle. Hunter Moore doesn’t have a Twitter account, but if he did, his bio could read: “loved.” Alas, Hunter Moore, this Hunter Moore, a freshman cinema studies major, shares a first and last name with that Hunter Moore. Oh, to have the same name as the most loathed man on the Internet.
When a friend posted a link to my column last week on his Facebook wall (or “timeline,” or whatever we call it now), Moore’s response was equal parts frustration and exasperation — “god dammit, not this again,” his comment read.
“People in my hall were genuinely concerned,” Moore said. “They were coming up to me and asking if I was a porn king or something.” Which, as Moore notes, is weird — where would he find the time to manage his porn kingdom?
Over 312 million people live in these United States, out of a global population of roughly seven billion. According to the website How Many Of Me, which gets its data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there are at least 150,000 last names and at least 5,000 first names out in the wild, or in common use, as the site says. Hunter Moore, the cinema studies major, and Hunter Moore, the (former) porn king, share both their first and last names with 35 other Americans, apparently. One wonders what all those other Hunter Moores are up to. Hopefully, for the sake of our Hunter Moore and his namesake, not starting awful porn sites. That would be a drag.
This society of ours, such as it is, takes great stock in names, which can make things annoying and unsettling when someone out there is making mischief “in your name.”@@this happens to me ALL the time!! -PA@@
“It’s like someone else has your identity,” Moore said. “A part of you is doing its own thing in the world.”
Of course, it’s even more annoying and more unsettling when your name-doppelganger is famous or, in the case of the two (actually, thirty-seven) Hunter Moores, infamous. Heaven help the nice old lady from Omaha, Neb. named Lindsay Lohan or the white, wonky Sunday school teacher named Rick Ross. Even though they might have gotten here first, so to speak, their names were made for them.
So what are we to do then? How can we help those who are not the Lindsay Lohan or the Rick Ross or the Hunter Moore? Clearly we can’t just do away with names. That would creates all kinds of problems, namely (as it were), with what would we replace them? Assigning people numbers would be a major-league headache, a philosophical and practical nightmare. So, I suppose, names will have to do for now, until something better comes along.
Until then, let us all heed the sage wisdom of Hunter Moore, the student: “If you see me on the streets, say ‘Hey.’ Just know I’m not a porn king.”