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[personal profile] swestrup
Its difficult talking about folks when everyone has the same first name. I once worked in a company with three guys named Mike in the same small department. They ended up being called Mike A, Mike B, and Mike C, since their last initials were A, B and C. I don't even remember who Mike A was, but I'm still friends with Mike B and run into Mike C on rare occasions.

In a similar vein, I currently know 4 folks with the first name of 'Peter' or some varient. Luckily (?) two are french, one is english and one is spanish, so a first cut can reduce them to 2 Pierres, one Peter and one Pedro. But what about the Pierres? (Okay, its true that [livejournal.com profile] cpirate is also a Peter, but I don't know any funny stories about him.)

Lately I've often had to stop and point out that when I am telling a funny story about Pierre, it either IS, or ISN'T [livejournal.com profile] pphaneuf. Obviously, a naming convention is needed. At first, it was proposed that I refer to them as 'Pants-On Pierre" and "Pants-Off Pierre", which would seem to be a distinguishing characteristic. I have seen both without pants, but only one of them has graced the main page of a website dedicated to pantslessness.

The trouble, of course, is that these are cumbersome phrases and in both cases the initals are P.O.P. An alternative then would be to use the P+P for Pants-On Pierre and P-P for Pants-Off Pierre. Of course, then one is tempted to do the math and end up with 2P and 0 as the identifiers, which don't seem to work as well.

Then again, a bit more math gives us Plogp2 and P-∞ which may or may not be better...

Date: 2005-09-25 06:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cpirate.livejournal.com
My first term in University, my residence of 150 people had 7 Mikes and 6 Heathers. What's worse, was 6 of the Mikes lived on my floor of 24 people. You could actually walk down the hall saying "Hey Mike...Hi Mike...how's it going Mike?" etc. Our solution was using a combination of nicknames, full names, or just last names. There was a similar number of Dans in the Math faculty that term, so in mathie spirit they all got subscripts, e.g. Dan7. It was still rather confusing.

My favourite solution to the problem of having too many Peters is having Pete, RePete, and then ThreePete. I don't know what you'd do after 3 though.

Date: 2005-09-26 06:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pphaneuf.livejournal.com
I found someone's solution at the office of calling you "McPeter" intriguing. Made me think of McNuggets. Maybe it's not that good an idea after all...

Date: 2005-09-26 01:52 pm (UTC)
ext_290181: (Default)
From: [identity profile] dcoombs.livejournal.com
It's "Mr. McPeter" and "Mr. McZion". I don't know where I got them from, but it's been working well so far.

Date: 2005-09-25 09:26 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] azrhey.livejournal.com
how about using last names?

Date: 2005-09-26 01:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] azrhey.livejournal.com
fan ( like the thing that spins )
oeuf ( like an egg in french :P )

or something

Date: 2005-09-25 10:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tjernobyl.livejournal.com
I once went to a party where there were thirteen mikes. Out of fourtyish people, that's a significant fraction.
From: [identity profile] pphaneuf.livejournal.com
Well, if you feel like taking that chance, you might as well just refer to me as "Pierre"... ;-)

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