Top 10 Sorta Famous People with Really Famous Names
A name is everything for a celebrity. It’s the words on the marquee on premiere night. It’s the sound of a screaming fan. It’s what the world remembers after a celebrity is long gone. Everyone knows names like Michelangelo, Plato and John Candy. And who really remembers what they looked like? Granted, I know exactly what John Candy looks like. But the point is, the name is what stays with the world after the person has left. And depending on how famous a celebrity gets, there is no limit to how long the name remains. For instance, “Machiavelli”, good name choice, long shelf life. “Fabio”, bad name choice, no long-term potential. But even if a name is so catchy that people can’t get enough of it, there is still something that can wreck a name’s ability to create an identity. And that is when another person has the same name. In the film Office Space, the character Michael Bolton describes the difficulty in sharing a name with someone famous. The fictitious Michael Bolton says of his name, “There was nothing wrong with it. Until I was about nine years old and that no-talent assclown became famous and started winning Grammys.” His coworker Samir replies, “Well, why don’t just go by Mike instead of Michael? And Bolton replies, “Why should I change it, he’s the one who sucks.” Bolton’s anger and stubbornness is consistent with that of a man who has been stripped of his identity by a famous person who, by being famous, has defined all that is associated with the name. Last week, I saw the news that Anna Nicole Smith’s son had died, she had given birth to a baby girl and that her lawyer, Howard K. Stern, was the father of her baby. And I only had one emotion. Sadness. No, no. Not because her son had died, although that’s sad. But that Anna Nicole’s lawyer had to go through life with the name “Howard Stern” and that probably it got so awkward introducing himself, that he felt he had to add his middle initial, “K”. You know that “K” wasn’t for style. But the phenomenon of a quasi-celebrity sharing a name with a super-celebrity is not unique to K. Stern. Here is the Chinese National Day Sunday Special:
The Top Ten Sorta Famous People With Really Famous Names