Unluckily, there’s a mass murderer who has exactly the same name as me. Like, the same middle name and everything. I’d tolerated this fact for a long time, but last year, I took the decision to tweak my name and start calling myself ‘Martin SFP Bryant’ professionally.
When I was an employee, it was less of a problem. But when I struck out on my own, I need to be Google-able in my own right. Having the first page of search results filled with the other guy is a bit of a problem, as you can imagine. Even if no-one confuses him with me, it’s not a great first impression.
A few years ago, I made music as ‘The Star Fighter Pilot,’ and as a result, I used ‘MartinSFP’ as my Twitter user name when I signed up there. Given ‘MartinSFP’ already pointed to me online, it made sense to retrospectively work that handle into my professional name.
I changed my name everywhere I could: Twitter, LinkedIn, this website, relevant profiles around the web… I even asked TV and radio producers to refer to me on air with my tweaked name when I was asked to comment on news stories. Given the circumstances, they usually said yes.
BAM! It worked. I changed my professional name just enough to make a difference, and the other guy haunts my search results a lot less as a result.
If you’d like to read more, The Atlantic wrote about my search engine woes last year.
Totally sympathise with this Martin.
When you google my name, you get loads of news stories about a completely different Richard Frost. In 2018, he was jailed for 12 years for causing death by dangerous driving during an 18-hour cocaine binge!
Not quite as infamous as Martin John Bryant, admittedly, but I do worry people might confuse the two of us online.
Maybe I need to start calling myself Richard SFP Frost…
We should start a ‘people with unfortunate namesakes’ club.
Maybe we can get Ian ‘H’ Watkins involved too