What to do if your name is not unique
by Marieke Hensel on November 30, 2008
One of the challenges in online personal branding, is that some people share their name with others. Sometimes for the good, others for the bad. A great story about Brooke Allen who is sharing name, city and profession with another Brooke Allen.
Many people share their name with someone else. If your real you has the best online reputation, do not change a thing, and keep building your name. If you do find someone else using your name to shame, you can try the following things:
1. Boost your reputation, say you have used your name as Joseph Rapsody, but another Joseph Rapsody came along and posting rubbish in forums, really work on your personal brand and get your name to fame on the internet.
2. Enhance your name, if your name is Joe Smith, you stand a good chance that there is not just one other Joe Smith to beat, there will be many. By using an initial in the middle, or always using your title in your name you will differ your name from the crowd of Joe Smiths. While there are 193.000 listings in Google for Joe Smith, none exists for Dr. Joe G. Smith.
3. Choose a new name that stands out, when I started my ways on the internet, I really did not like my name as it was, long and difficult for any non-Dutch speaker to repeat. A great moment was it that I married and could choose for my husband’s name, which I did, and I changed my last name from van der Graaf to Hensel. Other people choose for an entirely non-existing name that reflects what they do or make it easy to remember. Trade your own last name in for a last name that reflects your ambitions, i.e. Marieke Gates – Bill Gates or Marieke Branson – Richard Branson.
Change your first name into a name that is powerful or international can help to enhance your personal brand as well. What is it that you want your personal brand to be.
It is not easy to change your name. You will only see the full effect, if people use your name like that and you feel confident if you feel you are that name.
I never gave much thought to the branding of my name. I know there aren’t many—if any-Beverly Mahone’s out here. I did adopt “babyboomerbev” and “boomerbev” because it easliy identifies me as a baby boomer. Thanks for leading me to the post (from Twitter).
I am not sure I agree with changing your name. Your name is you, do you want to change who you are? I agree with making it more definable with initials etc. but if you have a good personal brand you name (real) matters. Even if there are more people out there with it, make your reputation known so they know who you are and what you are about. A good place to start are the social networking sites, the one I like is personavita.com If you have a good reputation people will recognize who you are by your work as well as your name.
@Mariek: Marriage and name change is not an option for all of us
I’m concerned about people changing their names just because of how it sounds.
Isn’t it better to build reputation and a personal brand first, and as a last resort change your name?
I would suggest that when changing names, a strong, independent name that relates to one’s industry may help … I use the name “IT Career Coach” for example.
Again, a word of caution: it is not easy to change your name, especially if it has been yours your entire life (meaning, you’ve never had an alias or a pseudo-name).
Learning to answer to a new nickname or fully different name takes memory and effort … like an actress learning to walk in the shoes of a character
I don’t think that by changing your name, it will help make it any more unique. It’s about who you are, the values you have and what you have achieved that makes your personal brand (your name) unique. If you achieve positive things you will be recognized no matter what your name is.
I do agree with this article to a certain extent because many people change their names so that they can be recognized, this is mainly done by people in the music industry because it can help them improve their personal brand.
I do understand the issues presented in your post very well. I have a very boring name, and my surname is also boring and hard to pronounce. I guess I will have a lot of issues with my name though my career since I have a very common name( especially in my country), still I could never change my name completly, because that would be like losing my identity,
I agree with the idea of changing your name, which is especially beneficial if your name is too common and aldready used by others. If your name is too complicated or hard to pronounce, it would be good to shorten it -like world famous singer J.Lo.
That is a great idea Marieke, many people may be facing the same problem of having a very common name or sharing the same name with at least one person out there. However, changing your name is not the only option there are many alternatives you could try first.
As you already mentioned some ways of dealing with the problem, another helpful approach would be to build a strong tagline that relates to your field of interest and associate it with your name wherever possible. It is also possible to make your name stand out by using your personal brand and get more active online.
Thnx for posting this useful information, it has given me an insight on how to make my name unique and further develop my own personal brand. I liked the idea of adding a uniqueness to a very popular name like John smith, just through adding dr. An excellent example of this is Dr Phil and he is a huge brand worldwide.
However I believe that a made up name can also be very successful if it is different and unique.
I believe this blog entry above clearly tells us how important is it to keep our online personal branding relative to what we brand ourselves being as. Like it mentioned above, maybe your name is too common to make it stand out along of being “the one and only”, but to build your reputation up, there should be something different to represent you, there there is only a point of you starting a brand with your name. don’t change your name to attract or make it easier for readers to understand. It is best when its the most unique.
Twitter: hensel
says:
Thanks for sharing that. You are right, you shouldn’t change your name just to make it sound unique, it should fit with who you are and stick with it for a long time. It’s not fashion or trendy, it’s a brand. And a brand asks for consistency and authenticity.
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I strongly agree with this blog, as my name is also hard to pronounce, thats why most people recognise me by my nick-name. However, I also believe that in personal branding, the aim is to highlight your values, your attributes, your strengths, therefore creating a name which has nothing in common with your real name, it’s almost like your are branding another person. Nevertheless, I agree with the fact that working around with your name, in order to make it unique and to stand out, is beneficial, but not to a point where the name created is totally different from your real name.
Twitter: hensel
says:
You are right Tedy, it would be best to just variate your name a little bit from the name that you have. If you come up with a name that is very different, it will not stick for the long run. You might not like it after a couple of years, or it doesn’t feel authentic. Thanks for sharing Tedy!
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