I moved in September one year, long before cell phones, and in December I got a call from someone with my same name. She’d received my Christmas ornaments from my friends (in a sort of smashed up box). When I picked them up, she also related that she’d received a middle of the night phone message from a friend (of mine, she assumed) which started out “XX, I’m depressed. Call me.” So this poor woman spent hours in the middle of the night trying to reach my friend to see if she really needed help.
This woman married into MY name, was divorced (and there was a third person with it in the city too, but she did get divorced and returned to her maiden name), but she was a realtor and an actress so didn’t to establish herself with a new name.
When we get invitations, we sometimes ponder how we know the people who sent them as well. We try to figure out the bride, groom and/or parents to puzzle the connection. Generally, we can figure it out, eventually.
I have the same 1st & last (maiden) name as 2 other girls that graduated from HS the same year as me. One went to the same flagship instate U as me and then went away to the same OOS U as me, living in the same dorm. We even dated the same guy a few times. It was interesting. It made life pretty confusing for the mail sorter in the dorm, so we just gave each other the combination for the mailbox so we could check each other’s mailbox to see if any mail was misdelivered (as it often was).
These are great stories! We had a similar experience— also no clue who the invitees or honorees were, and like you it ended up that we were friends of the groom’s parents.
Maybe a bit OT, but when I was in my 20’s, someone sent me a wedding announcement from the newspaper in a nearby city. The bride had my first name and last name (my maiden name, her married name), neither very common. But the strange thing is that she looked exactly like me.
We put our first house on the market by ourselves, no realtor. A man answered our ad to come look at the house. He had the same first and last name as DH! It’s not “John Smith,” but it’s pretty common. We all laughed and said that transaction probably wouldn’t be a great idea…
I share my name with a lawyer in town who went to law school at our state flagship (I’m a graduate of the “other” university.) I get tons of stuff addressed to her. I told my husband (also a rival grad) I should contact the school but he said no, all this is costing them money and we should keep it up.
You can’t assume an unusual name means it is unique. My maiden name is very unusual. One of my siblings has a not really common first name , but knows of at least two people with the same first/last name. One married into our extended family, the other person is not related to us.
