| Author | Message | ||
     Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 62.121.31.177 |
Here's a blog entry I wrote about usurp-phobia. Anyone else suffer from this affliction? http://mantoucan.blogspot.com/ Anyone here ever had their "fame" requisitioned by someone else simply because of their name? Anyone here ever changed their name after being usurped in this manner? I'll be interested to hear your views on this... | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 62.121.31.177 |
Slightly off-topic (but only slightly) here's a house that looks like Hitler (and it's in Swansea)... http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/03/29/the-swansea-house-that-l ooks-like-hitler-91466-28422600/ | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
I was disconcerted to see the name 'Joel Lane' on the front page of every newspaper about a decade ago. It was the street featured in the fake will that led to Harold Shipman's arrest. The street, therefore, in which one of his victims lived until she was murdered by him. It's in Hyde, Greater Manchester. Every time I read the phrase 'Joel Lane, Hyde' I took it as an instruction. I already knew about the street but up until that time it was merely a nice little backstreet I was happy to share a name with, though for adminstrative reasons I had no intention of moving there. There's also a Joel Lane House in the USA, the former mansion of an 18th-century businessman and now an antiquarian museum. A friend sent me a photo of its frontage, which displays a sign saying 'Trade entrance round the back'. How we chuckled. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Rhys, the Swansea house is a reconstruction. The original was built in the early thirties with help from Winston Churchill, who ordered its demolition in the forties. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 62.121.31.177 |
> Every time I read the phrase 'Joel Lane, Hyde' I took it as an instruction. Ha! I love you sometimes! The solution, of course, is to have an unusual name. My name was unusual was I was young; but now there are Rhys's everwhere! The little buggers. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.39.12 |
Elizabeth Taylor has long been a favourite novelist of mine to read. I've written a blog or two about her. There is a chemistry writer called DF Lewis who must get fed up with *me* when he googles his name. And that house in Swansea. Apparently Twitter has been going crazy about it. My own Bungalow House, by the way, looks like me! (Dogs and their owners, houses, too?) And, thinking about it, the house is probaably already in the process of usurping me. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.39.12 |
BTW, perhaps another name for Usurp-Phobia (an excellent cioncept) could be Gaddafery? | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 71.228.39.43 |
Back in the 90s I wrote my first novel (a terrible experience), a comic novel about a rather fussy demon who spent the whole of the plot possessing a host of characters. About two-thirds of the way through the first draft, I happened across a positive review in Publisher's Weekly of a comic novel about a man with a pet demon. The summary exposed plenty of similarities with my own novel. Eventually I grew anxious and abandoned the project. The author of that novel? Christopher Moore. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
"Here's a blog entry I wrote about usurp-phobia. Anyone else suffer from this affliction?" Indeed I do, Rhys - indeed, I'm credited with all sorts of stuff on the IMDb I know nothing about! http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0132793/ | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
On entering my name in Wikipedia I got this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Walsh Thank God! I could have been a Tory!! <shudder> | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
Put my real name into google and you only find references to me... - especially when you use quotes around it. | ||
| R.B. Russell (Tartarusrussell) Username: Tartarusrussell Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.142.87.56 |
I've always had to sign my name as "R.B. Russell" because "Ray Russell", the author of "Sucubus" etc, got there before me. Not that he'd worry about me usurping his name (especially as he's dead.) I've occasionaly received fan mail for him, but no offers to go back to editing "Playboy", which was his job for a while. An American who also wrote a Guide to First Editions was surprised a few years ago to be asked to sign one of my books. My huge, full-colour, coffee-table monster was offered to him when he'd only written a comparatively slight book on the subject. He took it very well, all things considered. Des -- would it help if all writers changed their name to D.F. Lewis? The issues you address via nenonymity would then not be an issue :-) | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 80.4.12.3 |
There are three significant Ray Russells to my best knowledge. #1 Raymond Rousel #2 Ray Russell #3 Raymond Russell (also known as R.B. Russell; see post above). I think of them as a single beast with three heads, like something from Ezekiel. I know it's wrong to think of them in this way; but I don't mind being wrong if the result is entertaining. I don't care so much about #2; but I would love for #3 to publish #1 in a new translation (#3 has translated from French before). Just my view. I'm allowed to have them! | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.104.134.64 |
There also a journalist I have come across. 'Allyson Bird covers the port industry, tourism and general business issues. She graduated from the University of South Carolina and most recently was a reporter with The Palm Beach Post.' | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Well, I just googled my name and found out that I've won prizes for being a track sprinter in the States. Considering I can hardly walk some days, that's quite an achievement!  | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Just googled my birth name and found out that I married some bloke called Dave in Portsmouth in 2008. I hope my husband sitting in front of the telly here at home doesn't find out!  | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.110.85 |
My son bill googled his name and found a picture of a gravestone with his name on it. It belonged to that astronaut. He said it used to really frighten him. | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Which astronaut? Bill the Galactic Hero? :-) | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.110.85 |
That's the one. I never realised I named him after him. BTW I know at least three Neil Armstrongs - all precisely the same age! | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.110.85 |
That's sort of sad... |