posted
Seaboe, why doesn't the judge drop the "J". I'm sure "Michael Fox" wouldn't have nearly the same name issues. Unless he's always used the "J" and refuses to change, it would seem to make his live a lot easier.
Gen "Why should I change my name, he's the one that sucks" Yus.
-------------------- IIRC, it wasn't the shoe bomber's loud prayers that sparked the takedown by the other passengers; it was that he was trying to light his shoe on fire. Very, very different. Canuckistan Posts: 3694 | From: Arizona | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Lainie: I worked with a guy named Jim Morrison who hated jokes about his name. He used to get calls from a client named Steve Miller, so we'd hear pages that said, "Jim Morrison, Steve Miller is on line 3."
...
There is also a Steve Miller down the hall from me, but the name is so common that I didn't think to remark on it. There is a Dave Matthews around here, too.
Nick
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posted
GenYus, "J" isn't even the actor Michael J. Fox's real middle initial. His real middle initial is "A," but he thought "Michael A. Fox" sounded too much like "Michael, a fox," so he picked "J." He had to use an initial because there was already a Michael Fox registered with the union.
And before anyone asks, yes, I do sometimes wonder what useful pieces of knowledge get pushed out of my brain so that it can store crap like that.
-------------------- How homophobic do you have to be to have penguin gaydar? - Lewis Black Posts: 8322 | From: Columbus, OH | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by GenYus: Seaboe, why doesn't the judge drop the "J". I'm sure "Michael Fox" wouldn't have nearly the same name issues. Unless he's always used the "J" and refuses to change, it would seem to make his live a lot easier.
It doesn't make his life difficult, so far as I know.
Seaboe
-------------------- Education is not the filling of a hard drive, but the lighting of a bulb. -- Yeats via Esprise Me Posts: 5562 | From: Seattle, WA | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by GenYus: Seaboe, why doesn't the judge drop the "J". I'm sure "Michael Fox" wouldn't have nearly the same name issues. Unless he's always used the "J" and refuses to change, it would seem to make his live a lot easier.
It doesn't make his life difficult, so far as I know.
Seaboe
Besides, Michael J. Fox's real middle initial is A, so I guess he can't be too picky about it. (ETA yeah, what Lainie said)
Edited because I'm an hour late and a dollar short. Guess I should read more betterer
posted
I know a trumpet player named John Kennedy. He gets some jokes about his name, but not many, I assume because history remembers the other John as John "F" Kennedy.
-------------------- Every time I see a good looking woman, I think, "0oooh. There's another one I'll never have!"
Corvette. The louder you scream, the faster I'll go. Posts: 1820 | From: Memphis, TN | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
So what happens if you call a character, and they're a real nasty sod, "John Smith"? Law suits from all the people with the most common name pairing in the English tongue?
[Total aside - I went to high school with a John Smith who often suffered a clip under the ear from authority figures when they asked for his name...]
With a limited number of names on the planet, there's sure to be someone who shares any combination of names you may devise - . (Although personally, I always liked to lift character names from the small type in the credits of movies...)
There's one hell of a precedent in the history of literature for 'thinly disguised' character portraits and satire - and unless the writer personally knew someone or their life was in the public domain - all similarities to people living or dead ARE purely coincidental.
-------------------- 'Do not follow in the footsteps of the wise, seek instead what they sought' Matsuo Basho Posts: 97 | From: Adelaide, South Australia | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by GenYus: Seaboe, why doesn't the judge drop the "J". I'm sure "Michael Fox" wouldn't have nearly the same name issues. Unless he's always used the "J" and refuses to change, it would seem to make his live a lot easier.
Gen "Why should I change my name, he's the one that sucks" Yus.
Maybe he wants to avoid confusion with Michael Fox the veterinarian/cat behaviourist (who has several books published)?
posted
This limited number of name combinations leads to the fun game of putting your own name into a search engine and finding out who/what you share it with.
I love the character names in Sheri S Tepper books - imaginative and unliekly to exist in real life.
posted
What happens with books such as those by James Herriott, where all the people in it are real but have had their names changed (including the author himself, whose real name was Alf Wight)? AFAIK only one person ever recognised herself in his books - Mrs Pumphrey - but if one of the less, er, well-portrayed people had recognised himself what legal ramifications could there have been?
I suppose it comes down to the did-it-actually-happen-that-way argument, doesn't it?
-------------------- Silence should never under any circumstances be construed as agreement. A lot of the time, it's simply a reflection that someone just said something so stupid that no response could possibly do it justice. - Ramblin' Dave Posts: 8528 | From: Nottingham, England | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
The book The Egg and I was a huge bestseller in the 40s. It was loosely based on the author's experiences chicken farming with her first husband in the Pacific Northwest. After the book came out many people claimed to recognize themselves in the books and several launched lawsuits. The most litigious was the Bishop family who claimed the Kettle family was based on them. I believe one lawsuit was settled out of court but another was eventually thrown out but not before it cost McDonald thousands in legal fees.
-------------------- If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation. - Jean Kerr Posts: 18428 | From: Ontario, Canada | Registered: Nov 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Eccles9: So what happens if you call a character, and they're a real nasty sod, "John Smith"? Law suits from all the people with the most common name pairing in the English tongue?
The obvious defense would be just that -- that it's a common name and there's no reason to believe the character John Smith is meant to resemble the plaintiff John Smith(s).
quote:[Total aside - I went to high school with a John Smith who often suffered a clip under the ear from authority figures when they asked for his name...]
I feel his pain. When I was married, my name was Smith. Luckily my first name isn't as common as John. But one day at work a disgruntled citizen asked my name, and when I said it was Mrs. Smith, she said "Well, then, "Mrs. Smith" (you could hear the quotation marks), I'd like to speak to your supervisor."
-------------------- How homophobic do you have to be to have penguin gaydar? - Lewis Black Posts: 8322 | From: Columbus, OH | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by LainieThe obvious defense would be just that -- that it's a common name and there's no reason to believe the character John Smith is meant to resemble the plaintiff John Smith(s).
It would hinge on more than the name. Forgive me I'm no author, but the narrative might give certain clues, that made it obvious. e.g.
John Smith was a 43 year old accountant, from the small village of XYZ. He was a short, slightly plump, balding man. Dissatisfied with life he had recently taken to defrauding his clients, and beating his wife.
If there was a John Smith, living in the villiage of XYZ, who fitted the above, and readers of the novel who knew him assumed the author was writing about him, then he might have a case.
-------------------- "Ladies and gentlemen, this is what is commonly known as money. It comes in all sizes, colours, and denominations - like people." Posts: 997 | From: Maidstone, UK | Registered: Jun 2006
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quote:Originally posted by LainieThe obvious defense would be just that -- that it's a common name and there's no reason to believe the character John Smith is meant to resemble the plaintiff John Smith(s).
It would hinge on more than the name. Forgive me I'm no author, but the narrative might give certain clues, that made it obvious. e.g.
John Smith was a 43 year old accountant, from the small village of XYZ. He was a short, slightly plump, balding man. Dissatisfied with life he had recently taken to defrauding his clients, and beating his wife.
If there was a John Smith, living in the villiage of XYZ, who fitted the above, and readers of the novel who knew him assumed the author was writing about him, then he might have a case.
But Eccles9, to whom I was responding, didn't ask about a lawsuit from one specific, recognizable John Smith. He asked about:
quote: Law suits from all the people with the most common name pairing in the English tongue?
And the argument might still be made that John Smith is such a common name, the author couldn't be expected to avoid his character's resembling one of the many real John Smiths.
-------------------- How homophobic do you have to be to have penguin gaydar? - Lewis Black Posts: 8322 | From: Columbus, OH | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
for those interested in the Tony Twist vs Todd MacFarlane saga, I link here Peter David's take on the matter. Useful because it also touches on what you can and can't have character's apparently based on real people saying.
BTW, I read somewhere very recently (but can't remember where) that Kitty Pryde (X-men) was named by John Byrne after an Art school clasmate of his. She claims he told her that one day he'd name a character after her because he thought her name was so cool. It IS cool.
-------------------- "You watched it. You can't UNWATCH it." Posts: 1646 | From: UK | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Faith: ... BTW, I read somewhere very recently (but can't remember where) that Kitty Pryde (X-men) was named by John Byrne after an Art school clasmate of his. She claims he told her that one day he'd name a character after her because he thought her name was so cool. It IS cool.
quote:The test for identity: "Are the words such as would reasonably lead persons acquainted with the plaintiff to believe that he was the person referred to."
"We're safe if we don't name them." Not always. All a claimant has to demonstrate to the court is that his family and friends understood the offending article to refer to him. Therefore if , say, you allege that an unnamed police constable, aged 30, working out of the town's central police station, had mistreated a prisoner in the cells, there is the chance of all the constables in their 30s at the station suing.
Of course that's only the way it works on our little island. YMMV
-------------------- "Ladies and gentlemen, this is what is commonly known as money. It comes in all sizes, colours, and denominations - like people." Posts: 997 | From: Maidstone, UK | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
Somtow Sucharitkul once gave a particularly nasty villain my name in one of his novels. I just smiled and told him "Wait until you see the Sucharitkul character I'm working on." I keep making him wait. Heh, heh, heh.
-------------------- "No hard feelin's and HOPpy New Year!"--Walt Kelly Hear what you're missing: ARTC podcasts! http://artcpodcast.org/ Posts: 7581 | From: Gainesville, Georgia | Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
(Foghorn Leghorn voice)Books--ah say, books on BIRDS! Don't know how that would FLY! That's a joke, son!(/Foghorn Leghorn voice)
-------------------- "No hard feelin's and HOPpy New Year!"--Walt Kelly Hear what you're missing: ARTC podcasts! http://artcpodcast.org/ Posts: 7581 | From: Gainesville, Georgia | Registered: Jun 2000
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But Eccles9, to whom I was responding, didn't ask about a lawsuit from one specific, recognizable John Smith. He asked about:
quote: Law suits from all the people with the most common name pairing in the English tongue?
And the argument might still be made that John Smith is such a common name, the author couldn't be expected to avoid his character's resembling one of the many real John Smiths. [/QUOTE]
I suppose you could name every character John Smith except for it would drive readers crazy, be a major impediment to character development and make following dialogue a nightmare!
Just to put the metaphorical shoe on the other foot, what if you made an extremely good character and based it on a real life bastard...would there still be grounds for misrepresentation?
-------------------- 'Do not follow in the footsteps of the wise, seek instead what they sought' Matsuo Basho Posts: 97 | From: Adelaide, South Australia | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Just to put the metaphorical shoe on the other foot, what if you made an extremely good character and based it on a real life bastard...would there still be grounds for misrepresentation?
If your character is good, there is no defamation. From my previous link
quote:Libel is the publication of a statement which exposes a person to:
Hatred, ridicule or contempt
or which causes him to be shunned or avoided
or which has a tendency to injure him in his office, trade or profession
in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally
emphasis mine.
-------------------- "Ladies and gentlemen, this is what is commonly known as money. It comes in all sizes, colours, and denominations - like people." Posts: 997 | From: Maidstone, UK | Registered: Jun 2006
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Alex Buchet
I'll Be Home for After Christmas Sales
posted
quote:Originally posted by HelloLlama:
quote:Originally posted by Nick Theodorakis: This might be an UL, but I've heard about a publishing company that would pay people a small fee to use their name in a book precisely to forestall the kind of suit mentioned in the OP ("No, this isn't about you, we used another John Smith. See, here's the contract").
As an aside, once I was googling our family name and was surprised to see it used for some characters in Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game. Which, of course, I had to get then.
Nick
The Westing Game is probably my favorite children's book of all time.
The first time I saw your name I immediately thought of the book!
I read a history of the "Please don't squeeze the Charmin" ads, and apparently before the campaign started the ad agency actually found someone named Mr Whipple and licensed his name from him.
Can't be too careful!
Posts: 202 | From: Paris, France | Registered: Feb 2006
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Alex Buchet
I'll Be Home for After Christmas Sales
posted
I work in a call center and I've talked to Christina Aguilera, Michael Jackson, James Bond, and many others. It's always amusing when it happens.
-------------------- Triumphs cannot be given. They must be taken, and the worse the odds, and the fiercer the resistance, the greater the honor. -- A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold Posts: 638 | From: Minnesota | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Llewtrah: This limited number of name combinations leads to the fun game of putting your own name into a search engine and finding out who/what you share it with.
...
Sometimes known as Ego Surfing. With literally hundreds of millions of names out there (at least), any semi-common name and surnames are going to end up being found together. I think I found at least 70 different people with my name once - plus a movie character.
A quick google search with my name (in quotes) brings up about 128 thousand hits. It's the law of large numbers in action.
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PrincessLeia
I'll Be Home for After Christmas Sales
posted
I went to school with a Lauran Hill. When student council held a Karaoke event, her name was crossed off the sign-up sheet because someone thought it was a joke.
On the other hand, I have a very rare last name. My grandpa came from Holland with only one brother, so every person in North America who has my last name is a relative. When I google my name, I never come up with anyone who shares both my first and last names. I even tried the Dutch spelling.
Posts: 185 | From: British Columbia, Canada | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Brad from Georgia: In my teaching career, I have encountered a number of interesting student names, including:
[*]John Watson (didn't like my saying "This school is college, not elementary, my dear Watson.")
That's my brother's name
My boyfriend is called Steve Martin. We used to work together & there was also another Steve Martin there - very confusing!
-------------------- Brosandi. Hendumst í hringi Höldumst í hendur Allur heimurinn óskýr Nema þú stendur Posts: 694 | From: York, UK | Registered: Jul 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Brad from Georgia: (Foghorn Leghorn voice)Books--ah say, books on BIRDS! Don't know how that would FLY! That's a joke, son!(/Foghorn Leghorn voice)
*cough* *splutter* YOMANK.
When I was 10, I went to camp with a girl named Allison Wonderland. Cruel parents, methinks.
-------------------- "For me, religion is like a rhinoceros: I don't have one, and I'd really prefer not to be trampled by yours. But it is impressive, and even beautiful, and, to be honest, the world would be slightly worse off if there weren't any." -Silas Sparkhammer Posts: 3239 | From: Ontario, Canada | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I know an Episcopal priest named James Taylor. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of James Taylors in the US, though.
The Screen Actors' Guild won't let two members share a name, so when you see an actor who uses a middle initial, it's usually because there was already an actor with that first and last name registered. I don't know if this was the case with Michael J. Fox, though.
Ronald Reagan's daughter, when she began acting, wanted to use her given name with her mother's maiden name-- ie, Patricia Davis. The SAG already had a Patricia Davis, though, so Reagan's daughter became Patti Davis.
Believe it or not, there was a silent film actor named Harrison Ford. He played Dimmsdale to Lillian Gish's Hester Prynne in the 1920's version of The Scarlet Letter. Had the SAG existed back then, this actor might have prevented the Star Wars actor from using his given name. Though honestly, I don't know what the SAG does with a name when the member actor dies or retires. Maybe they allow recycling after a certain number of years.
Posts: 75 | From: Bloomington, IN | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
I actually had a nightmare relating to this thread. I dreamed I was either in a very large hotel or on a cruise ship and I was being chased by some large man who was trying to torture and kill me and at first I didn't know why. So I'm running through this hotel and finally hide in a locker outside of a theater. While I'm in there, someone yells out my name and says that they loved my book. So I run out of the locker, see the guy trying to kill me and run into the theater where apparently I'm the guest of honor at some sort of book thing and the reason the guy wanted to kill me was because I named the main villian in my book after him and he was trying to kill me in the same way as described in the book. He said I ruined his life because everyone who read the book thought it was really about him. Very creepy.
-------------------- Don't argue with an idiot; people watching may not be able to tell the difference. "Divorce is not caused because 50% of marriages end in gayness." - Jon Stewart my space on myspace--now showing "80's Video Of The Week" Posts: 278 | From: Bel Air, MD | Registered: May 2006
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quote:Just to put the metaphorical shoe on the other foot, what if you made an extremely good character and based it on a real life bastard...would there still be grounds for misrepresentation?
If your character is good, there is no defamation. From my previous link
quote:Libel is the publication of a statement which exposes a person to:
Hatred, ridicule or contempt
or which causes him to be shunned or avoided
or which has a tendency to injure him in his office, trade or profession
in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally
emphasis mine.
I have actually known quite a few people in my life, some of them stage actors, who would find it quite offensive and even possibly damaging to their lives to be thought of as a "good" person. Some people actually wrap their entire lives around being such a complete asshat that someone printing kind and generous statements about them could be a serious detriment to their everyday lives or careers.
Happy "not to be confused with the other" Llama
P.S. Famous names I have known. Michael Myers, who goes by his middle name. and I went to school with a girl named Robin Williams, who was very sweet but never understood why people expected her to have a great sense of humor.
Posts: 30 | From: San Antonio, Texas | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
Eek. Sorry to hijack the post, but I am never going to ego-surf again (got the idea here). Number three in the list was my bankruptcy in the newspaper. :S
-------------------- "There is a race between mankind and the universe. Mankind is trying to build bigger, better, faster, and more foolproof machines. The universe is trying to build bigger, better, and faster fools. So far the universe is winning." -Albert Einstein Posts: 1058 | From: Yakima, WA | Registered: Dec 2005
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1. I once had a professor in college named John Rambo. He had even been in the army in Vietnam. He didn't look like Stallone though. I've been known to say that people like him are the reason they put that disclaimer in movies.
2. My last name is very unusual. It isn't exclusive to our family, but it's very scarce. Back in the 30s, my grandfather and his brother owned a John Deere dealership called "{Last Name} Brothers". One day, my gradfather was reading an issue of the John Deere farming magazine and thought he found an error. There was an article mentioning some new technique for doing something that had been submitted by "{Last Name} Brothers". He wrote in to mention that they'd made a mistake because their dealership hadn't sent in the technique. They wrote back to say that it was the other "{Last Name} Brothers" dealership. It turns out there were two brothers in Alberta somewhere that had the same last name who also had a John Deere dealership named "{Last Name} Brothers"! My grandfather wrote to them and I think they exchanged letters until his death.
Posts: 716 | From: San Antonio, TX | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Rivkah Chaya: The Screen Actors' Guild won't let two members share a name, so when you see an actor who uses a middle initial, it's usually because there was already an actor with that first and last name registered. I don't know if this was the case with Michael J. Fox, though.
[ ... ]
Believe it or not, there was a silent film actor named Harrison Ford. He played Dimmsdale to Lillian Gish's Hester Prynne in the 1920's version of The Scarlet Letter. Had the SAG existed back then, this actor might have prevented the Star Wars actor from using his given name. Though honestly, I don't know what the SAG does with a name when the member actor dies or retires. Maybe they allow recycling after a certain number of years.
The actor who played Han Solo was credited as "Harrison J. Ford" in some of his early roles, because he couldn't show the SAG proof that the previous Harrison Ford was dead. No one really noticed when he dropped the "J".
-------------------- “Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.” -- Edward R. Murrow
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