Saturday, August 08, 2009

Is this Me or I?

They say that if you want to know about someone you should do a google. But beware, how do you know that the information is actually about the particular person you are interested in and not one of their namesakes?

Checking the first ten pages of a google-search on my name brought a few surprises, some pleasant, some not so.

First hit is my website www.geraldengland.co.uk/.

In at #3 is my page on the Famous Poets website.

Fourth is this blog and sixth is my Geograph profile.

At #7 is a link to Gerald England's Facebook profile. Now I do have a facebook profile but this one is NOT ME.

The eighth entry is for someone who was at Illinois State University 1973 — 1977; it ain't me.

At #13 is something about the Gerald England Track & Field Invitational. References to this crop up quite frequently. My father was an athlete but I'm not. I don't know who the GE was who gave his name to this regular event but it sounds to be well supported.

Another namesake appears to have a patent for "Measuring energy contamination using time-of-flight techniques".

Note the org.uk domain which bears my name has no longer any connection with yours truly.

At #43 is the first to cause me concern. The Zoom Info page lists four sources of information, three of which are about me and which quote me as the publisher of New Hope International, but it associates me with a different New Hope International which is a charitable organisation in Colorado with which I have no connection whatsoever.

I am not the GE on classmates who was in the class of 1952 at East Prairie High School, MO., nor am I a personal trainer specialising in boxing, weight management, muscle building and conditioning. I do not work for Blue Shield Of California nor am I the ex-reverend who visited Pinelands in 2008.

At #58 is another namesake's Facebook profile.

At #79 I discover (hope the link works as it is a long URL) translations into Romanian by Florentin Smarandach of some of my poems.

I also find a poem of mine in Processed World #31, Fall 1993. It isn't listed in my bibliography but I can't remember all the magazines I submitted to around then, so the original must have gone astray in the post.

At #99 I find a 123people page which has two photos of my son Craig and others which I suspect are of his namesakes. These are not public domain photos and have not been posted there with my permission. On investigation, however, I find the site is little more than an indiscriminate search engine and the photos no more than thumbnails. I don't care for the way it imbeds links within its own frames, but ...

enough searching for one day.

I must send good wishes to all my namesakes.

4 comments:

  1. Do ou mean you haven't copyrighted your name?!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've just done a similar search on my nick name (which is mainly what I use when on t'internet) and found plenty that aren’t me, but some that are worryingly close, like the I.T. firm with my name. As I'm an I.T. contractor, and have a firm with almost the same name, there could easily be confusion there. Also tried my real name, apparently I work in Stafford for the health authority. Not.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That was a highly interesting post. It shows clearly both hoe easily one can be found and how easily one can be led astray.

    I have done things like that from time to time, but never with such interesting results. However, my name is not uncommon one in Norway, so most results pertain to other people.

    I must do it again.

    ReplyDelete
  4. this is fun to do. i have two famouns near namesakes, a slightly infamous exact namesake but most worryingly there's another poet in Edinburgh called Juliet Wilson.....

    ReplyDelete