I would likely have used an "alternate" name, although my present mudcat registration - and name - was created for me by a beloved other person.

My "real name" is effectively useless for purposes of identification, since there's already another person here using it, and at least one other here (using a webname) who has the same "real name."

Since my last name is even more common than my first, anyone who might Google "my name" would find a long line of evangelists, serial killers, politicians (in decreasing order of degenerate reputation - although there are the occasional other rocket scientists, nuclear physicists and brain surgeons as well). My own sterling accomplishments would appear only in the other "289,734,629,432 items found" by Google that one can never access.

By using my mudcat name, I am uniquely identified here - a quite different situation than the anonymity and confusion that would appear if I tried to use my "real name." You can Google my mudcat name and find a few results for ME, although even there, there are many others using the same name. (Only the ones on mudcat are mine.)

I just wish the "other guy" with my name would get over his(?) lingerie fetish, so I'd quit getting all the spam from those French (Canadian?) companies. I've received nothing but French language spam (which I can't read, except laboriously and inaccurately) for more than a year now. Even the Nigerians ignore me (unless they're French-speaking Nigerians who wear lovely lace panties).

John