Namenclature.

[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 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 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 P^log_p2 and P^-∞ which may or may not be better...

Comments

[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.

[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...

[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.

[azrhey.livejournal.com]

how about using last names?

[swestrup]

I've never been sure how to pronounce "Phaneuf", and "Martineau" is also a mouthful.

[azrhey.livejournal.com]

fan ( like the thing that spins )
oeuf ( like an egg in french :P )

or something

[tjernobyl.livejournal.com]

I once went to a party where there were thirteen mikes. Out of fourtyish people, that's a significant fraction.

*whips out uuidgen (or guidgen.exe, for those so inclined)*

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

5486fb63-fe00-4d5d-be45-199f426c3b67

Re: *whips out uuidgen (or guidgen.exe, for those so inclined)*

[swestrup]

Its a bit wordy. How about calling you 5486 for short?

Re: *whips out uuidgen (or guidgen.exe, for those so inclined)*

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

Well, if you feel like taking that chance, you might as well just refer to me as "Pierre"... ;-)

Re: *whips out uuidgen (or guidgen.exe, for those so inclined)*

[swestrup]

A bizarre suggestion, but I guess we could try it... :-)