As posted over in the thread on "Why nick-names online?:" (edited some here)

Ref to: Date: 26 Jun 07 - 04:38 AM

http://howmanyofme.com/ says:

There are 4,960,193 people in the U.S. with my first name.<sup>1

1</sup> approximately 103,527 of them are female?

There are 704,066 people in the U.S. with my last name.

There are 11,557 people in the U.S. using both my first and last name.²

(I think they underestimate that last number, as I have about that many relatives using the same first and last name.)

² While I'm not sure, I believe there are at least 3 of us at mudcat with the same first and last names. There are (confirmably) at least 2.

A Google search for my first+last names reports approximately 60,200,000 "hits," but they will only show me the first 875 of them. I do not (so far as I can tell) appear in any of those. (It may be noted that the Google search isn't limited to the US.)

The last time I ran a Google on it, there were only 3 separate users of JohnInKansas, and the other two appeared only briefly and incidentally. (A total of 3 hits not me.)

Now which is the better way to identify myself to my friends here, for the purposes of this site? I could use my "real name" and be completely anonymous, or I can use a mudcat name and be (almost) uniquely ME.

John