A Name Game

 

 

    There are 38 of me. When I was much younger, I thought there were only two: my father and me. He thought so too. Although my birth certificate reads Monroe Anderson, III, my father, Monroe Anderson, Jr., was orphaned when he was one, so we knew of no other living Monroe Anderson.
    Back in the middle of the last century, it wasn’t easy discovering how many of you there were. Of course, with the Internet, it’s a cinch. I’ve long known that the Texas cancer center, M.D. Anderson, was named after the late businessman, Monroe Anderson, whose middle name was Dunaway. And a couple of years back, a fictional teenager in the novel, Maybe a Miracle, started showing up on Google’s search engine.
    But, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I discovered how many Monroe Andersons there actually are in the United States—38.  I also discovered that Anderson is no longer the 8th most common name in America as it was when I was a child, now it’s 10th. Out of the 303,944,807 people in the U.S there are 945,268 Andersons and 12,158 Monroes.
    But enough about me. Let’s see, there are 431 Americans named Joyce Owens but only one who is a nationally known artist and is married to me. Anyway, Shakespeare comes to mind here. His immortal rose by any name line.

    But I digress. There are 449 John McCains. There are 510 people named George Bush, including his daddy, president number 41 and 261 who share William Clinton’s name. There’s only one Hillary Clinton.
    Here’s the puzzler. According to the website, HowManyofMe.com, that does the U.S. Census search and provides the numbers, there are zero Oprah Winfreys. Ditto for Barack Obamas.
    You may want to wait for the 2.0 version, after they've worked out the glitches. If you want to check it out right now, go to the left column of this blog where you’ll find HowManyOfMe listed under Research In. One click and you too can discover if there are many of you—or none at all.