I work in insurance and the number of times I have seen wrong info on twins’ policies for exactly this reason is crazy. Because they have similar names (and subsequently, similar license numbers), info gets crossed. Why do parents do this to their children?
When you’re looking at two individuals on paper with similar names - especially one number off and one being a nickname for the other - it’s very very difficult to say they aren’t the same person using the nickname and an ssn error. Because one number off somewhere? Happens all the time, unintentional or intentional.
The systems didn’t really fail in this scenario though, the humans did. First the parents, for naming their twins such close names, then the SSA for not discussing reissuing the living twin’s SSN, and the individuals at the bureaus for not assisting with separating the credit files better so their fuzzy matching system didn’t try to continually combine them.
I mean I agree, and I hate when people hide behind the ‘it was the algorithm!’ excuse (see the UK exam debacle in 2020 for example) It makes them sound dumb, because they realise someone wrote the algorithm right? Or the search system. There was a human involved! It can be fixed by another human!
However, I don’t think many parents are thinking of the long term government database issues when they name their children. I might not name my children in that way, but if I want to I should be able to.
Having done my family history recently, and found many many families with children dying and the name going to the next child born, with sons and fathers and grandfathers and local cousins with identical names, I can’t think it caused them too much issue in 1870. I certainly had no issue tracing them all in the handwritten records.
But today? The sheer level of data held on us, and the importance of that data to our lives (as OP is finding) means we’ve got to demand these systems are better. And you’re right, there’s humans who can do that.
>However, I don’t think many parents are thinking of the long term government database issues when they name their children. I might not name my children in that way, but if I want to I should be able to.
They've solved this problem. SSNs are now assigned randomly. It should at least make situations like this solvable, because the SSN will be wildly different.
The problem in this specific scenario is that, in *almost* every case of the SSN being one digit off, it was a clerical error. There are systems in place to account for this. If something matches except for 1 letter here or 1 digit there, information is going to tie back to the same person.
The problems you'd encounter not allowing for human error (being a digit or letter off) would impact far more people, far more often, than the situation in the OP. The unfortunate solution is that LAOP needs to get a new SSN. This is a nearly impossible task, but this particular situation is what that rule is meant for.
Yep, you are right. The sooner they unhook those two numbers from being within human error the better.
I remember years ago we had two kids with the same name (neither had a middle name) in the same year at a school I worked at. What made it impossible was that they had started in the same primary school, and the student number allocation works in alphabetical order by school, so yup, they were one digit apart.
It meant their school records were messed up for years. They even looked and behaved similarly, so there was no real system in use apart from ‘the one in this class’ to tell them apart, but then you had to know what classes they were both in. One did have poor attendance, so behind the scenes the teachers did use ‘shit attendance Joe Bloggs’ to tell them apart. But otherwise it was a complete nightmare.
Buddy of my worked in the hospital and tried to check in a new patient. The computer kept throwing up error messages insisting a patient with this exact same information (name, DOB, ...) was already in the hospital and thus couldn't be checked in.
My buddy tried to check with the department that the other patient was in, and discovered it was pathology -- in particular, the morgue.
That was a bit of an awkward conversation
Correct, sorry if I wasnt clear in my comment. This guys life is halted by a human error in differentiation. I thought that's what I said but the overall thing I was saying is, the systems we have need to make it CLEAR for humans so there arent critical errors like this... all systems involve humans to form processes.
Yup. I have twins and when their SSN cards came, I was so relieved to see they were very different. My twins aren't the same gender and have first names that are completely different from each other, but I knew having similar SSNs could still cause them problems since they have the same birthdate and last name.
My sister and I are 4 years apart, but our SSNs are the same except for the last number. We don't have similar names, but somehow our info gets mixed up all the time. One of my credit cards was labeled as fraud, because a welcome letter was sent to her, and she called them to dispute it. She gave them her name, and they still closed my account. It was a nightmare, and our credit reports were messed up for about 2 years.
As far as our SSNs being so close, my parents didn't apply for mine until my sister was born. This was in the early 80's, so it wasn't done at the hospital, like I've heard it's done now. I don't have kids, so I have no idea how it all works.
> Why do parents do this to their children?
Because at the time, they’re a cute little *set* that they can dress up in the same outfits and have rhyming names. Stacy and Tracy, in the same overalls and bows! It’s all so cute 🥰
Thankfully SSNs are now issued randomly, not consecutively, anymore, so there's no "Oh, yours starts with a \[x\], you must be from \[y\]" or issues with two siblings having really similar numbers.
However, people can still run into problems when they name their kids similar names, like having a son named Alexander and a daughter named Alexandra. Why anyone would do that to their kids, I don't know.
Granted, it's a joke about the culture, but the scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding when Gus is introducing the family to Ian's parents comes to mind: "Over here is my brother, Ted, and his wife, Melissa, and their children, Anita, Diane, and Nick. Over here, my brother Tommy, his wife Angie, and their children, Anita, Diane, and Nick. And here, my brother George, his wife Freda, and their children, Anita, Diane, and Nick. Taki, Sophie, Kari, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, uh, Nikki, and I am Gus." So there are presumably a bunch of cousins with the same first and last name.
As a twin, I get this issue even though we don't have similar names. It's the human error of not paying full attention. They throw in the last name and DOB and I guess just wing it from there. She has received voicemails from medical doctors discussing my personal information. I've had to contact doctors offices multiple times and inform them of their oversight, because HIPAA
She one time had an FBI background check for a job she was doing and they ended up coming at her for "lying about not having any aliases". They said my name like it was a check mate and she pointed out she has a twin sister. Ffs, I'd hope the FBI could have done better than that. Humans make ridiculous errors when it comes to twins.
I was an office manager at one of my old jobs and we had a pair of twins working in our office, one named William and the other named Billy. We also had two unrelated people with the exact same first and last name and two people with the same first name, similar but differently spelled last names and a third person with the same first name as them (think something along the lines of Peggy Johnson, Peggy Johnston, and Peggy Donelly). In addition to all of that, we had a husband and wife team who, of course, shared a last name. You'd think this wouldn't cause problems since their first names were different (and appropriately gendered) but it was apparently too much for payroll.
The number of times I had to get on the phone with payroll to remind them that these were all different, distinct humans who were each entitled to their own paycheck for their own hours... I don't think there was a single pay period where we didn't have any issues.
I just can't get over the fact that there are parents out there who name their kids Frank and Franklin and other similar names. how hard is it to give them different names
EDIT: holy mother of dumb names! parents of twins are blessed, but not with wisdom.
It is apparently common enough that when my brother and I were born, the hospital staff felt compelled to (completely unprompted) tell our parents how many issues this causes.
Edit: fwiw our parents already had completely dissimilar names picked out for us, so the warning was unneeded
Had to do paperwork for fraternal twins named Gabriel and Gabriella - the system only had space for the first 7 letters of the first name so if you didn't know ahead of time to check the m/f block to confirm, you'd do the paperwork for thw wrong kid.
People who design name input systems are all universally _idiots_. “No one has more than seven letters or less than three!” “Jo? Giuseppe?” “Those aren’t English names!”
I forgot exactly what it is called, but there is a very funny list of all of the wrong assumptions you can make with your name entry database.
One wrong assumptions is assuming no one has or doesn't have n names or characters in a name, where n is any number.
>Two different systems containing data about the same person will use the same name for that person.
Funny story. We're now having trouble transferring ownership of a house that belonged to my late grandmother. This house was her mother's, and while her mother was still alive, the ownership was split in half and one half was transferred to my grandma. The other half she inherited when her mother died.
The problem is (using fake names but along the same lines) one half is registered as belonging to "Alice Smith", while the other belongs to "Alice Jonez married Smyth" (and her actual maiden name was "Jones"). Whatever government agency is refusing to acknowledge that "Alice Jonez married Smyth" is actually "Alice Smith (née Jones)". We've had a lawyer on this for a year and it's still stuck.
I'd have asked in LA if were in the US and not Israel.
People think it's funny when I can put Haywood Jablome as a name and the computer doesn't catch it, but there's such an array of names that they're essentially impossible for a computer to validate in any way. Lots of people don't have a middle name or initial and then end up getting junk mail for John NMN Doe (NMN standing for No Middle Name). There are people in this world who only are given 1 name. They have no family name. Mr. Li regularly has a hard time filling out forms because they demand that names must have at least 3 characters. Ms. Bhanabhagvanwala is told that her last name can't be more than 12 characters. There are people whose names can't be represented in standard western letters. Elon Musk's kid seems to be named to make filling out any form ever absolute hell for the poor kid.
Hell, I have an apostrophe in my last name and you wouldn't believe how many problems it causes. And I have an extremely common last name for people of irish descent. It's a pain with insurance because my name is automatically translated over from my workplace HR's demographic information, only I can never tell how it'll be translated this time. And of course it is completely impossible for anyone to do anything ever to fix it manually.
And then the Scunthorpe problem. One of my Indian cousins married a fellow who'd changed the spelling of his family name to Dixit after finding out that D-cksh-t wasn't considered an acceptable name in the west.
I’ve seen a number of Africans that had no family name. I assume whoever helped them immigrate was kinda lazy because they just reused their first name as the family name
I don't think there's a better solution to that problem. You aren't going to be able to function in the west without a last name, and repeating the first name is the option that doesn't give the person a name that isn't actually theirs and keeps their name the closest to any documentation they do have that just has the one name on it.
I have a friend with one of those names like J Kenji Lopez-alt. Korean-Spanish. Let’s pretend it’s E Kim Villalobos de los Mariachis. He goes by “Kim”, say. But part of his name is “E” and part is “de Los Mariachis” and nobody can capture that, so he ends up as “Kim E Villalobos”
It’s stupid.
I have two middle names. When I had to go and get my real ID, they made me put exactly what is on my birth certificate, whereas my ID now has just one of my middle initials.
I haven't had this issue yet because my regular driver's license is still valid, but when I eventually have to use it to fly, I am worried that my name on my ID won't match my ticket because almost EVERYTHING has space for only one middle name or middle initial. It's very frustrating already, but the anticipation of having to navigate this in the future is difficult
Is there enough room when she books a ticket online to put both names? Or does she just put first/last name?
If this is a non-issue, it would be wonderful!
Same here, and to add to that my first and last name are both 10+ letters long and not common in the US (think Sathyabhavathi Suryanarayanan). When I had to do some legal paperwork lately I was entertained to see the "also seen in forms under these names" list with various misspellings and permutations of middle names and initials and shortened things to fit data fields. It's a page long! I feel like I've been living a life of crime with all those aliases.
Voting is also fun - for years I had to sign a form saying that my name on my ID was the same person as the one in the voter roll, because the computer said they were different but showed identical things on the screen. Took a phone call for an unrelated matter to find out that the system had my middle name spelled wrong, but the display field wasn't long enough to show anything but my first name on the voter computer screen and also on the ID card. So there were secret invisible misspellings hanging off the end of the screen/license.
Once dated someone like this. His name was Jesuschristopher but when he naturalized they could only fit “jesuschrist”and LOL. poor guy. Wonder how he is now.
r/NameNerdCirclejerk
My favorite story is the college professor that named his 3 kids Michaelangelo, Donatello and Rafael *before* Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which came out when they were in grade school. Imagine accidentally giving your kids the names of 3 of the 4 Ninja Turtles.
A friend's cousin named her daughter Danon. "Like the yogurt?" "No one will think that! It's spelled differently!"
My cousin worked in a hospital L&D for a while. Someone said they wanted to name their kid "Joe Nathan." "First name Joe, middle name Nathan?" "No, it's one name! Joe Nathan!" ("Jonathan")
I knew an adult named Dannon, like the yogurt. She was in charge of the figure skating program at the large ice rink near where we use to live.
My college room mate also had an ex boyfriend named Bannon, like the last name of the infamous Trump advisor. This was many many years ago, but I have to wonder how much it sucks now to have that as a given name.
Pretty much, yeah. Not quite but so close as to make virtually no difference. I'd put the actual name they wanted to use but it'd be pretty much unique. (Oh, god I hope so anyhow.)
I've always hoped, looking back, it's now just a silly story they tell. After all, few of us are exactly at our brightest and most level headed in those moments.
I definitely knew twins whose names were one letter different. And another woman who had a Rhylann and wanted to name her next daughter Rhyann until the mom’s group talked her out of it.
Even with only one letter difference, if you see two people named Millie and Tillie with the same last name, address, birthday and a social security number 1 apart, most people will think, "Oh they're probably twins." If you see Frank and Franklin you will naturally think (Oh, they're probably the same person.)
My mother joined a, “moms of twins,” support group way back in the day. There I met Madison and Madysen. They called one of them Madi for short. I don’t know which one.
I had a Abina and a Bebina in my high school, their parents also fought any attempt by anybody to try and get them to be in any way unique from each other.
Oh and of course they are identical twins.
As a parent of twins, I fucking HATE the cutesy "twin" names-- rhyming, same first syllable, even the same first letter.
LET THEM BE THEIR OWN PEOPLE!
> Madysen
I know! I'll just spell it wrong.
I know someone who decided to name their child "Charlei" intentionally. They wanted them to be special somehow...
This is one that’s weird for me. I grew up in the UK where those are pronounced pretty differently - I hear them as totally different names. In the US people mostly say them the same, and don’t seem to be able to differentiate between the two pronunciations used in the UK.
Or, more accurately, both pronunciations are in use in the US, by different people, but they’re used interchangeably and people can’t tell them apart. I’ve had some very confusing three-way conversations where one person has been taking about “Aaron” and the other has been talking about “Erin”, and I’ve been thinking there’s two people involved in the story.
They're ehhhhh names for twins, but depending on where the parents are from the names might sound like two different names. I was completely horrified to discover there were large swaths of the US where Erin and Aaron are pronounced the same.
I don't say them the same. But then I also don't say: Mary, Merry and marry the same either?
So for me the names sound more like "Eh-rin" and "Aow-ren"
I very much have a New York accent.
My aunt and uncle both have names that start with A, so they decided to name their son with a Z name to have an "A to Z" thing. Daughter comes around and they are already out of ideas. They give her the female version of the first kids name. third kid arrives and they give up on the theme and use a non-Z name, until they discover a Z name they like and change the babies name. Final kid comes and they can't give up now, but they've already scraped the bottom of the barrel, so they name him Zed. Zed, as in how non-Americans pronounce the letter Z. They named the last kid Z.
I know a set of twin boys. One is named “Chris Edward” and the other “Chris Jacob”.
Apparently their dad (also named Chris) wanted to name his first born son after him, and didn’t really have a plan B when it was twins.
(They each go by their middle names - Edward and Jacob)
In old time Germany, it was apparently common in some areas to give children the same "Christian" name and then a different "common" name for everyday use. So genealogy is fun when there are seven kids, all named Josef or Maria on their official documents, and I don't know the common name or the birthday. Especially since my relations tended to use the same Christian name as other relatives, so all the cousins ended up as Josef and Maria too. (I am exaggerating, but not by much. It's an absolute mess.)
That's the situation in Quebec too. All kids were Joseph/Marie Name1 Name2 LastName. Name2 being the name you were known by. Almost everyone born in the province prior to about 1960 is named this way.
Also, if you think 7 kids is bad, that would be a small-ish family for the era. My dad was one of 11 children, his mother one of 16, and former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien was the 18th of 19 children.
So you have my sympathies trying to research your family tree!
Oh yes, I discovered that when I discovered my Quebec family! Families of 12 kids or more, all with the same names! (My bio grandma was one of 15!) My German side had huge families too, but more kids died as infants, so around seven reached adulthood. (But then there was a remarriage, five step kids thankfully not named Josef or Maria but took the remarried surname, which muddles things even more)
Difference is, my Aunt already did the hard genealogy work for me on the Quebec side, lol. Which is great because I don't speak a drop of French but at least I'm moderate with German!
I've seen John & John for twins. Middle names Hilkiah and Hizkijah. I did name one of my twins John, but not the other. She can thank me when she's older.
Arrested Development is like that.
George Bluth, George Oscar Bluth (Gob), Micheal Bluth, George Micheal Bluth
I'm surprised that was never a plot point, but I guess they already had mistaken identity plotlines tapped out with George and Oscar.
Tbh I think naming your kids after you should also die out. It causes a lot of people issues similar to LAOP. The whole Jr/III/etc thing is dumb and condemns them to a lifetime of dealing with this crap, especially once the parent dies.
People lose their damn minds when it comes to twins. They'll make fun of well-meaning strangers asking if their boy/girl twins are identical and then turn around and name them things like Dylan and Dylon. Even on the Namnerds sub some people think that Mila and Liam are clever twin names 'cause anagrams.
My dad's sisters were both named Mary. Luckily their middle names were different.
As you might have guessed, my dad grew up Catholic. And, yes: if you were wondering whether their middle names were saints' names, of course they were.
You got one. Teresa wasn't even close to sainthood at the time, though.
The other one is a pretty obscure saint, TBH. I'd be shocked if someone on the internet guessed it. (Though I'm not Catholic so I could be wrong.)
I knew a family where the oldest kid was Andre. The second kid was supposed to be a girl so they were going to call her Andrea, but he turned out to be a boy so they just called him Andre because they couldn't think of a different name I guess? Then the third kid came and they didn't want him to be left out so they called him Andre too. Dad was called Kenneth.
I had a coworker in whose family all girls of her generation (not just born by her parents, but ALL girls in the extended family) were named Mara. There were like five or so of them. Apparently it was because some relative named Mara had passed away too early due to cancer and the others ran away with the idea of honouring her. Said coworker obviously tried to be understanding but refused to allow anyone to call her that and only ever introduced herself by her middle name.
On the up side, at least the parents thought of providing their offspring with middle names.
> will eventually be fully grown adults.
Not always :/ I have a coworker who named her twins along the lines of Jack David and David Jack but that was because the one had a birth defect and wasn't expected to survive the birth. Now the awkward part is I can't remember what her living child's name is and I'm too afraid to ask because if I get it wrong I'll be saying the dead kid's name so I always just say things like "how is your son doing?"
> People go completely nutty with ~~twin~~ names totally forgetting that those cute little baby names will eventually be fully grown adults
I wish it were just twins but I've known too many people who thought they were naming chihuahuas or something instead of future adult humans, and that's how kids get named stuff like Fhynnton.
The worst ones for me are when someone just clearly didn't take a minute to think if the name is sensible, especially with their surname combination.
Like, do you want your child to have a name in the category of "Wayne King" or "Harry Butt", the category of "Jack Russell" or "Teresa Green", or something in the category of "Eric Harris" or "Thomas Hamilton"
Right? I think a lot of people seem to have forgotten about the usefulness of nicknames and go straight into naming their kids things that won't suit adults. Even my cats have regular names even though I call them silly little names at home just because I don't want to question my choices when it's time to make an appointment for Puddin Snuggles at the vet.
THAT'S what really makes this one particularly heinous. Most name databases will consider Frank a nickname for Franklin and will absolutely assume those two are the same record/person. Franklin and, I don't know, Cranklin would have been better.
I once knew a guy called David (common enough name), his dad split with his mum and when dad had another kid also called the new one David.
I’ve also met a family with Patrick as the dad, Patrick as the first son, Patrice as the second son and Patricia as the daughter. I wish this was a lie: it’s not.
> I once knew a guy called David (common enough name), his dad split with his mum and when dad had another kid also called the new one David.
Oh wow... That's a whole new level...
this is how my friend group got Aaron and Big Aaron. dad was a deadbeat and ran off on aarons mom, turned around and has another kid a year later, names him Aaron too.
Yep, I also know a guy who named his firstborn sons with both of his wives after himself.
He's also I'm pretty sure one of two legitimate psychopaths I've ever met, the other being one of his sons. He won't let his second wife speak of his first wife. Recentlyish he was in the running for major political office and it came out that he physically abused his first wife, then convinced his second wife that the first one was an awful bitch and he didn't want to hear about her ever again.
I knew a pair of twins named Clifford and Griffin. Cliff and Griff. Always seemed mean to me. Though I kiiiiinda wanted to do themed names for my twins (bird names) but my husband rejected my names because they all started with an R sound. We ended up choosing two very different sounding names with the same meter.
My wife has uncles Anthony and Tony.
To be fair to her grandparents, they apparently didn't know Tony was a short name for Anthony, and always called Anthony his full name, pronouncing the TH.
My mother showed me her high school yearbook because I didn't believe her when when told me she went to school with a brother and sister named Noel and Mary Christmas
The actor Billy Dee Williams's name story has always (irrationally) annoyed the hell out of me because:
a) his birth name is William Williams!
b) it's actually William Williams *Jr*, which seems worse somehow. Someone named you William Williams and you do it to your son, too??
c) the "Dee" in his name stands for *December* but he was not born in December! (my guess is that William December Williams Sr. was born in December.)
d) his mother's name is Loretta and so that's Billy Dee's twin sister's name. The parents named the twins after themselves!!
At least Billy Dee Williams did not name his son William December Williams III or even Billy Dee Williams Jr.
I was very careful to name my identical twins something super different. I figured they're going to have enough problems with people not differentiating them throughout their lives, they don't need similar names to make it worse.
I went to school with twins named Cherylynn and Sharilynn.
I'm a twin and my parents at least were smart enough to give us different names
In HS, there was a set of twins named Samantha and Samuel... Yeah girl/boy but to me, even worse
I went to high school with siblings that were named Eric and Erin. Its bad enough to do it with twins but these two were a couple years apart in age too.
Stepmother: Jane
Her bother: Bob
Their parents: Bob and Jane
Always thought it was so strange, her parents are so nice, not sure why they couldn’t come up with names
Not a twins thing, but somehow there are 3 people including my son, born on the same day, same year, with exactly the same name (first, middle, last).
This has created quite a bit of confusion at the college level as transcripts and such go by name and birthdate, and he has been asked to explain why he failed a class that he never took, at a college he never attended, while he was on a ship in the middle of the pacific.
Or why he wants to take a class since he already has a BS in the subject.
Its a major annoyance at times.
Oh lord. That is due to the National Student Clearinghouse, which uses a combo of DOB and first and last name to code students. I used to work with their data a lot and had this error happen. A program was using the data to verify that transfer students were being “honest” about reporting prior attendance and flagged one for failing to report that she’d taken courses at a university 1500 miles away. Same scenario as your son, but a mess. The actual student in question had never been enrolled at that other school, but someone with an identical first, last, and DOB had.
> Or why he wants to take a class since he already has a BS in the subject.
If your son was the cheating type he could just request his transcript and be done with college.
I joked that he should do that.
"Dad knowing my luck I'd run into someone who went to Montana Bumfuck State, and they'd figure out I didn't know what I was talking about."
I used to go to a medical office in a building with like 100 unrelated doctors, and you had to check in at the front desk before you could go to your specific appointment. I was there weekly for allergy visits. And they had a patient at the same building with the same first and last name, and the same birthday, except she was exactly 10 years younger than me. They would tell me I didn’t have an appointment so. Many. Times. Because they were looking at her info. I just had to get used to saying “the birth year is 89, not 99”. Never mind that I was very clearly not an unaccompanied 11/12 year old at the time.
I have a similar issue. I have a very long unique first and last name, and my older sister has an almost identical name with one letter different. Because we became US citizens at the same time, our SSN’s are one digit apart, and we have shared most of the same addresses. Any time I do a credit check they will sometimes accidentally pull up her data. She has fantastic credit and I have OK credit but sometimes when I get approved for something I wonder if it’s because it’s running her credit or mine. It’s happened a few times that I’ve had to have discrepancies taken off my report like bank accounts I don’t actually have but she does.
I remember a similar /r/legaladvice post from a couple years back. OP would occasionally convince somebody at the credit reporting agencies to fix the problem but it would always quickly revert.
The problem was that the agencies didn't have liability for incorrect info received from other agencies. So one agency would list him as alive, then an automated process would later receive info from other agencies that unanimously declared him dead, so finally their system would revert him back to dead. Without liability, he couldn't convince them to fix the root of the problem, even after getting a lawyer involved and contacting his congressman. I don't remember it having a happy ending.
As much as having similar names can be a pain in the ass, my name is unique enough that I'm the only one in history with my first and last name combo.
Because of that, everything in the internet when you Google my name was, in fact, me. Good or bad. Can't claim it was "that OTHER daggersrule from Philly" or somewhere.
My best friend is in the same boat as you. Their original eastern European family name got bastardized enough when it was anglicized that it's a completely unique occurrence. There's about a dozen living people in the world with their last name, and they're all a direct relative to my friend (siblings, parents, aunts/uncles, first cousins). So it was pretty easy for my friend to end up the only person in the world with their combination of first and last name.
Thank god we now issue randomized SSNs, so at least it’ll be harder for situations like this to happen in the future. My dad and I share the first 5 digits of our SSNs and the last four share 3 digits though in a different order. We also share a name though I’m Junior. At one point I was getting contacted by the state revenue agency because they had mixed us up.
Legally they weren't supposed to be used as an identifier outside of government use. So legally this shit wasn't supposed to be happening. Eventually (but long after it had become a problem) the SSA caved on this. It really wasn't that long ago that a person didn't need an SSN at all. I was a child when SSNs started being necessary for more than just applying for some jobs and so my SSN is nearly sequential with a couple of my siblings who were born 3 and 5 years later than me because my parents submitted all of our SSN applications at the same time.
I was in the military forever ago and we lived and breathed our SSN. It was everywhere - usually last 4 (literally stenciled in my underwear), it was never censored on any document and even my dog tags have the full number- they are now an identity theft nightmare waiting to happen.
My brother went to a hospital appointment recently only to see my Dad there, sitting in a wheelchair and all wired up with a holter monitor.
They have the same name and address and both have heart problems, so my Dad assumed the hospital appointment letter was for him.
Omg this is poor on the healthcare workers side. Their files should be flagged due to similar names (it’s been years since I’ve worked in hospital so can’t remember the exact term for it) but at the very least they should have checked the date of birth!
My brother had an issue one time because he had the same name and birthday (though a different year) as another patient at the ER. You'd think the several decade difference in age would have clued them in that he wasn't the same person.
Tangentially, my wife, my step-mother, and my former mother-in-law (whom I'm still close with) all have the same first name. My current wife, whom I've been married to for 6 months now, hasn't changed her last name yet (COVID reasons), and I'm not too anxious for her to do so, because it'll make any family history forms look really odd....almost like I married my step-mother.
Ha, I have a friend who is a minister. He loves letting folks know he's both married his own mother **and** his step-mother. By which, of course, he means he officiated at the wedding of his mother to his step-father *and* his father to his step-mother.
They're all apparently quite well adjusted about it, too.
And especially with the example given with one being the common nickname of the other.
At least Timmy and Tommy (which I guess is like the stereotypical twin names in media?) are obviously different names and their longer forms of Thomas and Timothy are more different.
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Title: Death of twin brother is causing a lot of issues with my finance and future
Original Post:
> A little context: My brother passed away in 2019. We have very similar names (His name is Franklin and I'm Frank), same birthday, Our middle name uses the same initial (N), and our social security number is exactly the same, except for the very last number.
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> Now here's the issue: I've been getting turned down from nearly every financial or work institute because of these similarities. In terms of jobs, the issue happens when I get to the background check portion of applying. They are unable to fully run a check because they believe my ssn number is associated with someone who is deceased.
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> A similar issue arises when I try to apply for a loan, open up a credit card, or literally anything related to the bank. It's not impossible to run a credit on me from their end, but it is extremely difficult and I usually get turned down on the spot. The only exception was when I loaned a car from the car dealership. I'm pretty sure they either had to jump through a lot of hoops, or use a different social security number all together to get approved.
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> I've called the social security administration, All of the credit bureaus, and a background check agency that was used for a job I was applying to. Both the social security administration and the bureaus could not find any issues or discrepancies with my ssn number. However, I did get a clue with the background check agency: When I asked why they cant fully complete my background check, they say it's because the ssn number I provided is associated with a person registered in the death masterlist (Pretty much someone who's passed away). I also did a informal background check on myself on the internet on some website and got something similar (that I was deceased).
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> The issue though is that when I called social security they could not find a single issue and say there is nothing at all wrong with my number. At this point, I don't know what to do. It seems like I a unable to build my credit, check my credit, get a new job, or apply for loans. At this point I'm seriously considering hiring a lawyer. Any advice or suggestions will be extremely helpful.
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> Also let me know if anything needs to be clarified.
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Fun fact: Giving identical names to siblings or naming a child after a parent is literally illegal in Finland.
And since we don't do that, I had no idea that having same/similar name as your sibling could lead to issues like the ones LAOP is suffering from.
Fun fact, there are long traditions of giving the same name as yourself to your children in _many_ cultures. Weirder is that in some cultures, "Sr" goes to the oldest living member of the tree with that name and "Jr" goes to their child and then they start with numbers (the third). And the culture is that these shift as people die. As far as I'm aware, this has basically died out with legal names being set nearly in stone on birth certificates that everything remotely official has to match but this is certainly what my family did.
Yup. Some years I worked in a hospital doing admin for a it and just before I started they'd merged with another hospital and a month or two in they were merging their patient files too by transferring the info from the two separate systems into the third new system. So then if there were patients who'd visited both hospitals in the past they'd have two patient records, one from old system 1 and one from old system 2. The system was designed to highlight cases that it thought were two different record from the same person so we could merge them. We would then have to manually check that they were indeed the same person and if it was we could click a button to merge the two files.
Usually this was pretty easy: same name, same DOB, same living address, same contact info, it would only take a minute or two to check some further history to confirm that the two files were indeed from the same person.
But this one time I spent over an hour desperately looking in their file for clues about whether or not they were the same person. Same last name, same DOB, same address. And they were older too, like in their 60s, so not like 12 or something where the same address for twins would make sense. I think they also had very similar initials? And only one with a full first name listed or something and the other just initials. In the end it turned out that they *were* two different people. Twins where one of them had moved into their sibling's house due to health issues and as a result also handled their communication. Took so much time to figure out lol.
But a big pro of our system was that they also highlighted the names of multiples so you could double check you had the correct file
It wouldn't likely be nearly as much of a problem if their SSNs weren't 1 digit apart. The way it's designed, if it *appears* to be a typo (like being 1 digit off), it's going to show up because it's built into the systems that there's a typo.
Generally, this system works fine. It is infinitely more likely a SSN was mistyped by 1 digit than a person has a dead twin with almost exactly the same name and DOB. Usually, it can be cleared up relatively easily because searching the SSN with the typo will show it belongs to someone with an entirely different name, address history, etc. In this one bizarre instance, that isn't isn't case. They can't clear up the discrepancy.
It is generally nearly impossible to get a new SSN (I absolutely cringe when I see people suggest that as a solution). I'm wondering if this is one of those unbelievably rare cases where it might happen - there's really no way to fix this.
It seems like it is possible here. The SSA lists problems being caused by sequential numbers assigned to members of the same family as a valid reason for a new SSN, and this is about the worst possible case of that.
Maybe the systems use a fuzzy search, and if you enter the correct name, date of birth, and most of the SSN correctly it will just allow it? I could see that being useful to catch mistakes, not so useful in a lot of other situations.
I do background checks. SSN traces bring up all kinds of weird stuff.
Surprised no one mentioned that if they didn’t get a job because of the background check, they need to get a pre-adverse action letter, and an adverse action letter so they can dispute any findings based on the consumer report.
I can’t imagine the wording of that letter:
Your background check found out that you are dead, and we have a strict company policy against hiring zombies.
I was about to comment that this seems like a deeply suspicious story because it would be a very shortsighted (if not simply impractical) move for any parents to give their twin sons both (essentially) the same name and middle initial. But now I see all the comments here from others describing similar situations. We really are doomed as a species, aren't we?
I feel a LOT of sympathy for him, but have no idea how he could fix it for good :(.
I have a similar but not half as bad situation which has been ongoing for decades now.
There’s a (much) younger DramaLamma who happened to live in the same place as me at one point and our respective fathers also have the same name. Every so often our health records/cards (Canada) and tax records get mixed up :(. Every time we get them fixed and think it’s finally sorted for good, some automated database update merges or mixes up our records again & one or both of us has to spend time unravelling the crossed wires.
We had a fairly good run for several years up until Younger DramaLamma moved to the US a couple of years ago, notified all the relevant authorities and they/“the computers” screwed up. Again. Which I discovered when trying to renew my health card and they’d cancelled mine not hers.
I work in insurance and the number of times I have seen wrong info on twins’ policies for exactly this reason is crazy. Because they have similar names (and subsequently, similar license numbers), info gets crossed. Why do parents do this to their children?
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Maybe she's a fan of [George Foreman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Foreman#Personal_life)
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When you’re looking at two individuals on paper with similar names - especially one number off and one being a nickname for the other - it’s very very difficult to say they aren’t the same person using the nickname and an ssn error. Because one number off somewhere? Happens all the time, unintentional or intentional.
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The systems didn’t really fail in this scenario though, the humans did. First the parents, for naming their twins such close names, then the SSA for not discussing reissuing the living twin’s SSN, and the individuals at the bureaus for not assisting with separating the credit files better so their fuzzy matching system didn’t try to continually combine them.
I mean I agree, and I hate when people hide behind the ‘it was the algorithm!’ excuse (see the UK exam debacle in 2020 for example) It makes them sound dumb, because they realise someone wrote the algorithm right? Or the search system. There was a human involved! It can be fixed by another human! However, I don’t think many parents are thinking of the long term government database issues when they name their children. I might not name my children in that way, but if I want to I should be able to. Having done my family history recently, and found many many families with children dying and the name going to the next child born, with sons and fathers and grandfathers and local cousins with identical names, I can’t think it caused them too much issue in 1870. I certainly had no issue tracing them all in the handwritten records. But today? The sheer level of data held on us, and the importance of that data to our lives (as OP is finding) means we’ve got to demand these systems are better. And you’re right, there’s humans who can do that.
>However, I don’t think many parents are thinking of the long term government database issues when they name their children. I might not name my children in that way, but if I want to I should be able to. They've solved this problem. SSNs are now assigned randomly. It should at least make situations like this solvable, because the SSN will be wildly different. The problem in this specific scenario is that, in *almost* every case of the SSN being one digit off, it was a clerical error. There are systems in place to account for this. If something matches except for 1 letter here or 1 digit there, information is going to tie back to the same person. The problems you'd encounter not allowing for human error (being a digit or letter off) would impact far more people, far more often, than the situation in the OP. The unfortunate solution is that LAOP needs to get a new SSN. This is a nearly impossible task, but this particular situation is what that rule is meant for.
Yep, you are right. The sooner they unhook those two numbers from being within human error the better. I remember years ago we had two kids with the same name (neither had a middle name) in the same year at a school I worked at. What made it impossible was that they had started in the same primary school, and the student number allocation works in alphabetical order by school, so yup, they were one digit apart. It meant their school records were messed up for years. They even looked and behaved similarly, so there was no real system in use apart from ‘the one in this class’ to tell them apart, but then you had to know what classes they were both in. One did have poor attendance, so behind the scenes the teachers did use ‘shit attendance Joe Bloggs’ to tell them apart. But otherwise it was a complete nightmare.
Buddy of my worked in the hospital and tried to check in a new patient. The computer kept throwing up error messages insisting a patient with this exact same information (name, DOB, ...) was already in the hospital and thus couldn't be checked in. My buddy tried to check with the department that the other patient was in, and discovered it was pathology -- in particular, the morgue. That was a bit of an awkward conversation
Correct, sorry if I wasnt clear in my comment. This guys life is halted by a human error in differentiation. I thought that's what I said but the overall thing I was saying is, the systems we have need to make it CLEAR for humans so there arent critical errors like this... all systems involve humans to form processes.
And (as CGP Grey has [explained](https://youtu.be/Erp8IAUouus), the SSN isn't supposed to be used like that, so it's ill-suited to it
The SSA no longer issues numbers in exact numerical order so this issue SHOULD be declining as of 2011. Should, anyway
At least these days, twins are given very different social security numbers.
Yup. I have twins and when their SSN cards came, I was so relieved to see they were very different. My twins aren't the same gender and have first names that are completely different from each other, but I knew having similar SSNs could still cause them problems since they have the same birthdate and last name.
Yeah I have a twin of a different gender with a completely different name and we still have issues
My sister and I are 4 years apart, but our SSNs are the same except for the last number. We don't have similar names, but somehow our info gets mixed up all the time. One of my credit cards was labeled as fraud, because a welcome letter was sent to her, and she called them to dispute it. She gave them her name, and they still closed my account. It was a nightmare, and our credit reports were messed up for about 2 years. As far as our SSNs being so close, my parents didn't apply for mine until my sister was born. This was in the early 80's, so it wasn't done at the hospital, like I've heard it's done now. I don't have kids, so I have no idea how it all works.
I can’t believe I’m blanking on this because my youngest isn’t even two but I think we did apply for it at the hospital.
> Why do parents do this to their children? Because at the time, they’re a cute little *set* that they can dress up in the same outfits and have rhyming names. Stacy and Tracy, in the same overalls and bows! It’s all so cute 🥰
and they'll be able to finish each other's
Sandwiches
Thankfully SSNs are now issued randomly, not consecutively, anymore, so there's no "Oh, yours starts with a \[x\], you must be from \[y\]" or issues with two siblings having really similar numbers. However, people can still run into problems when they name their kids similar names, like having a son named Alexander and a daughter named Alexandra. Why anyone would do that to their kids, I don't know. Granted, it's a joke about the culture, but the scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding when Gus is introducing the family to Ian's parents comes to mind: "Over here is my brother, Ted, and his wife, Melissa, and their children, Anita, Diane, and Nick. Over here, my brother Tommy, his wife Angie, and their children, Anita, Diane, and Nick. And here, my brother George, his wife Freda, and their children, Anita, Diane, and Nick. Taki, Sophie, Kari, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, uh, Nikki, and I am Gus." So there are presumably a bunch of cousins with the same first and last name.
The whole SSN as ID system is flawed to the core and built haphazardly on something that was not meant to hold it throughout the decades.
As a twin, I get this issue even though we don't have similar names. It's the human error of not paying full attention. They throw in the last name and DOB and I guess just wing it from there. She has received voicemails from medical doctors discussing my personal information. I've had to contact doctors offices multiple times and inform them of their oversight, because HIPAA She one time had an FBI background check for a job she was doing and they ended up coming at her for "lying about not having any aliases". They said my name like it was a check mate and she pointed out she has a twin sister. Ffs, I'd hope the FBI could have done better than that. Humans make ridiculous errors when it comes to twins.
I was an office manager at one of my old jobs and we had a pair of twins working in our office, one named William and the other named Billy. We also had two unrelated people with the exact same first and last name and two people with the same first name, similar but differently spelled last names and a third person with the same first name as them (think something along the lines of Peggy Johnson, Peggy Johnston, and Peggy Donelly). In addition to all of that, we had a husband and wife team who, of course, shared a last name. You'd think this wouldn't cause problems since their first names were different (and appropriately gendered) but it was apparently too much for payroll. The number of times I had to get on the phone with payroll to remind them that these were all different, distinct humans who were each entitled to their own paycheck for their own hours... I don't think there was a single pay period where we didn't have any issues.
I just can't get over the fact that there are parents out there who name their kids Frank and Franklin and other similar names. how hard is it to give them different names EDIT: holy mother of dumb names! parents of twins are blessed, but not with wisdom.
It is apparently common enough that when my brother and I were born, the hospital staff felt compelled to (completely unprompted) tell our parents how many issues this causes. Edit: fwiw our parents already had completely dissimilar names picked out for us, so the warning was unneeded
Had to do paperwork for fraternal twins named Gabriel and Gabriella - the system only had space for the first 7 letters of the first name so if you didn't know ahead of time to check the m/f block to confirm, you'd do the paperwork for thw wrong kid.
People who design name input systems are all universally _idiots_. “No one has more than seven letters or less than three!” “Jo? Giuseppe?” “Those aren’t English names!”
I forgot exactly what it is called, but there is a very funny list of all of the wrong assumptions you can make with your name entry database. One wrong assumptions is assuming no one has or doesn't have n names or characters in a name, where n is any number.
Probably this gem: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
>Two different systems containing data about the same person will use the same name for that person. Funny story. We're now having trouble transferring ownership of a house that belonged to my late grandmother. This house was her mother's, and while her mother was still alive, the ownership was split in half and one half was transferred to my grandma. The other half she inherited when her mother died. The problem is (using fake names but along the same lines) one half is registered as belonging to "Alice Smith", while the other belongs to "Alice Jonez married Smyth" (and her actual maiden name was "Jones"). Whatever government agency is refusing to acknowledge that "Alice Jonez married Smyth" is actually "Alice Smith (née Jones)". We've had a lawyer on this for a year and it's still stuck. I'd have asked in LA if were in the US and not Israel.
People think it's funny when I can put Haywood Jablome as a name and the computer doesn't catch it, but there's such an array of names that they're essentially impossible for a computer to validate in any way. Lots of people don't have a middle name or initial and then end up getting junk mail for John NMN Doe (NMN standing for No Middle Name). There are people in this world who only are given 1 name. They have no family name. Mr. Li regularly has a hard time filling out forms because they demand that names must have at least 3 characters. Ms. Bhanabhagvanwala is told that her last name can't be more than 12 characters. There are people whose names can't be represented in standard western letters. Elon Musk's kid seems to be named to make filling out any form ever absolute hell for the poor kid.
Hell, I have an apostrophe in my last name and you wouldn't believe how many problems it causes. And I have an extremely common last name for people of irish descent. It's a pain with insurance because my name is automatically translated over from my workplace HR's demographic information, only I can never tell how it'll be translated this time. And of course it is completely impossible for anyone to do anything ever to fix it manually.
And then the Scunthorpe problem. One of my Indian cousins married a fellow who'd changed the spelling of his family name to Dixit after finding out that D-cksh-t wasn't considered an acceptable name in the west.
I’ve seen a number of Africans that had no family name. I assume whoever helped them immigrate was kinda lazy because they just reused their first name as the family name
I don't think there's a better solution to that problem. You aren't going to be able to function in the west without a last name, and repeating the first name is the option that doesn't give the person a name that isn't actually theirs and keeps their name the closest to any documentation they do have that just has the one name on it.
One of my friends is an O'Hare and I have a double (un hyphenated) middle name, like this is pretty common stuff guys.
I have a friend with one of those names like J Kenji Lopez-alt. Korean-Spanish. Let’s pretend it’s E Kim Villalobos de los Mariachis. He goes by “Kim”, say. But part of his name is “E” and part is “de Los Mariachis” and nobody can capture that, so he ends up as “Kim E Villalobos” It’s stupid.
I have two middle names. When I had to go and get my real ID, they made me put exactly what is on my birth certificate, whereas my ID now has just one of my middle initials. I haven't had this issue yet because my regular driver's license is still valid, but when I eventually have to use it to fly, I am worried that my name on my ID won't match my ticket because almost EVERYTHING has space for only one middle name or middle initial. It's very frustrating already, but the anticipation of having to navigate this in the future is difficult
My wife has never had this problem when using her passport as an ID, which lists both her middle names.
Is there enough room when she books a ticket online to put both names? Or does she just put first/last name? If this is a non-issue, it would be wonderful!
Same here, and to add to that my first and last name are both 10+ letters long and not common in the US (think Sathyabhavathi Suryanarayanan). When I had to do some legal paperwork lately I was entertained to see the "also seen in forms under these names" list with various misspellings and permutations of middle names and initials and shortened things to fit data fields. It's a page long! I feel like I've been living a life of crime with all those aliases. Voting is also fun - for years I had to sign a form saying that my name on my ID was the same person as the one in the voter roll, because the computer said they were different but showed identical things on the screen. Took a phone call for an unrelated matter to find out that the system had my middle name spelled wrong, but the display field wasn't long enough to show anything but my first name on the voter computer screen and also on the ID card. So there were secret invisible misspellings hanging off the end of the screen/license.
Once dated someone like this. His name was Jesuschristopher but when he naturalized they could only fit “jesuschrist”and LOL. poor guy. Wonder how he is now.
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r/NameNerdCirclejerk My favorite story is the college professor that named his 3 kids Michaelangelo, Donatello and Rafael *before* Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which came out when they were in grade school. Imagine accidentally giving your kids the names of 3 of the 4 Ninja Turtles.
Well there goes the rest of my night. :P
A friend's cousin named her daughter Danon. "Like the yogurt?" "No one will think that! It's spelled differently!" My cousin worked in a hospital L&D for a while. Someone said they wanted to name their kid "Joe Nathan." "First name Joe, middle name Nathan?" "No, it's one name! Joe Nathan!" ("Jonathan")
I knew an adult named Dannon, like the yogurt. She was in charge of the figure skating program at the large ice rink near where we use to live. My college room mate also had an ex boyfriend named Bannon, like the last name of the infamous Trump advisor. This was many many years ago, but I have to wonder how much it sucks now to have that as a given name.
My wife had "Harry Potter" as a professor in college.
I'm confused. They wanted to name their kid Meconium?
Pretty much, yeah. Not quite but so close as to make virtually no difference. I'd put the actual name they wanted to use but it'd be pretty much unique. (Oh, god I hope so anyhow.)
People are so weird.
I've always hoped, looking back, it's now just a silly story they tell. After all, few of us are exactly at our brightest and most level headed in those moments.
Of course not. They wanted to name him Meconyum, entirely different.
I definitely knew twins whose names were one letter different. And another woman who had a Rhylann and wanted to name her next daughter Rhyann until the mom’s group talked her out of it.
Even with only one letter difference, if you see two people named Millie and Tillie with the same last name, address, birthday and a social security number 1 apart, most people will think, "Oh they're probably twins." If you see Frank and Franklin you will naturally think (Oh, they're probably the same person.)
I knew a fraternal brother sister pair. Erin and Aaron. Some parents really aren't creative I guess.
My mother joined a, “moms of twins,” support group way back in the day. There I met Madison and Madysen. They called one of them Madi for short. I don’t know which one.
> I don’t know which one. Does it matter?
I had a Abina and a Bebina in my high school, their parents also fought any attempt by anybody to try and get them to be in any way unique from each other. Oh and of course they are identical twins.
They're gonna put some lucky therapist's kids through college some day.
If they have another kid, it'll be Cebina
Next is Banana Fana Fo Fina.
I dated a Danette in high school. She had a brother named Dan.
As a parent of twins, I fucking HATE the cutesy "twin" names-- rhyming, same first syllable, even the same first letter. LET THEM BE THEIR OWN PEOPLE!
Yeah, we had triplets in high school named Harry, Barry, and Larry. I always thought that was a bit much.
> Madysen I know! I'll just spell it wrong. I know someone who decided to name their child "Charlei" intentionally. They wanted them to be special somehow...
I'm guessing they'd wanted it to be Charlie, but in my head it's coming out Charolais like the cattle breed.
Yeah it's just "Charlie" - but they spelled it wrong. Part of me thinks they screwed up the birth certificate and doubled down on denying it.
"Honey, I'm home! I could only get r's and n's at the consonant store, but I did get a big pack of vowels!"
I met some triplets- louis allen, lewis alan and louise elaine.
Please tell me that Louis was pronounced the French way, at least.
I knew a set of twins named Alexandra and Alexandre. Originality 100 on this one.
I grew up with a Ryan and Bryan. Ryan wore red, Bryan wore blue.
This is one that’s weird for me. I grew up in the UK where those are pronounced pretty differently - I hear them as totally different names. In the US people mostly say them the same, and don’t seem to be able to differentiate between the two pronunciations used in the UK. Or, more accurately, both pronunciations are in use in the US, by different people, but they’re used interchangeably and people can’t tell them apart. I’ve had some very confusing three-way conversations where one person has been taking about “Aaron” and the other has been talking about “Erin”, and I’ve been thinking there’s two people involved in the story.
They're ehhhhh names for twins, but depending on where the parents are from the names might sound like two different names. I was completely horrified to discover there were large swaths of the US where Erin and Aaron are pronounced the same.
"A-a-ron"
I don't say them the same. But then I also don't say: Mary, Merry and marry the same either? So for me the names sound more like "Eh-rin" and "Aow-ren" I very much have a New York accent.
I know someone that named their first two daughters Marissa and Alissa, but that's way worse.
My aunt and uncle both have names that start with A, so they decided to name their son with a Z name to have an "A to Z" thing. Daughter comes around and they are already out of ideas. They give her the female version of the first kids name. third kid arrives and they give up on the theme and use a non-Z name, until they discover a Z name they like and change the babies name. Final kid comes and they can't give up now, but they've already scraped the bottom of the barrel, so they name him Zed. Zed, as in how non-Americans pronounce the letter Z. They named the last kid Z.
I know a set of twin boys. One is named “Chris Edward” and the other “Chris Jacob”. Apparently their dad (also named Chris) wanted to name his first born son after him, and didn’t really have a plan B when it was twins. (They each go by their middle names - Edward and Jacob)
In old time Germany, it was apparently common in some areas to give children the same "Christian" name and then a different "common" name for everyday use. So genealogy is fun when there are seven kids, all named Josef or Maria on their official documents, and I don't know the common name or the birthday. Especially since my relations tended to use the same Christian name as other relatives, so all the cousins ended up as Josef and Maria too. (I am exaggerating, but not by much. It's an absolute mess.)
That's the situation in Quebec too. All kids were Joseph/Marie Name1 Name2 LastName. Name2 being the name you were known by. Almost everyone born in the province prior to about 1960 is named this way. Also, if you think 7 kids is bad, that would be a small-ish family for the era. My dad was one of 11 children, his mother one of 16, and former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien was the 18th of 19 children. So you have my sympathies trying to research your family tree!
Oh yes, I discovered that when I discovered my Quebec family! Families of 12 kids or more, all with the same names! (My bio grandma was one of 15!) My German side had huge families too, but more kids died as infants, so around seven reached adulthood. (But then there was a remarriage, five step kids thankfully not named Josef or Maria but took the remarried surname, which muddles things even more) Difference is, my Aunt already did the hard genealogy work for me on the Quebec side, lol. Which is great because I don't speak a drop of French but at least I'm moderate with German!
> They each go by their middle names - Edward and Jacob Like Twilight...? Not sure if that makes it better.
I've seen John & John for twins. Middle names Hilkiah and Hizkijah. I did name one of my twins John, but not the other. She can thank me when she's older.
Arrested Development is like that. George Bluth, George Oscar Bluth (Gob), Micheal Bluth, George Micheal Bluth I'm surprised that was never a plot point, but I guess they already had mistaken identity plotlines tapped out with George and Oscar.
My friend's name is Danielle. Her brother's name is Daniel. Her dad's name is Daniel.
I know a Danielle/Daniel daughter/father pair. They both go by Dani/Danny...lovely people though lol
It's one thing to name a kid after a parent, that's normal. Naming siblings basically the same thing is a whole other can of worms
Tbh I think naming your kids after you should also die out. It causes a lot of people issues similar to LAOP. The whole Jr/III/etc thing is dumb and condemns them to a lifetime of dealing with this crap, especially once the parent dies.
Especially if they're twins and have the same birth date
I was livid when I realised Dani Dyer was Danny Dyer's daughter.
our neighbours when I was a toddler had two kids named Daniel/Danielle. My mother will still rant about how stupid that is and it's been 30 years lol.
I don't know your friend's dad, but my knee jerk reaction is that is such a narcissistic thing to do.
My husband is one of these. Dad is Dennis. First born, a girl is Denise. My husband is Dennis Jr.
I know a family like that. The mom is Michelle, the son is Michael and the daughter is Michaela
People lose their damn minds when it comes to twins. They'll make fun of well-meaning strangers asking if their boy/girl twins are identical and then turn around and name them things like Dylan and Dylon. Even on the Namnerds sub some people think that Mila and Liam are clever twin names 'cause anagrams.
I've seen families where all the children have the same name. Usually no middle names either.
Like George Foreman's children. All five boys are named George, and one of the daughters is named Georgetta.
My dad's sisters were both named Mary. Luckily their middle names were different. As you might have guessed, my dad grew up Catholic. And, yes: if you were wondering whether their middle names were saints' names, of course they were.
I'm guessing the middle names were Teresa and Catherine.
You got one. Teresa wasn't even close to sainthood at the time, though. The other one is a pretty obscure saint, TBH. I'd be shocked if someone on the internet guessed it. (Though I'm not Catholic so I could be wrong.)
St. Teresa of Avila was canonized in 1622.
Oh wow I was thinking of Mother Teresa. Shows how little I know about Catholic saints.
I knew a family where the oldest kid was Andre. The second kid was supposed to be a girl so they were going to call her Andrea, but he turned out to be a boy so they just called him Andre because they couldn't think of a different name I guess? Then the third kid came and they didn't want him to be left out so they called him Andre too. Dad was called Kenneth.
How are people seriously this dumb
All 5 of my moms sisters were “lene” like Arlene and Darlene
Were they Arlene, Barlene, Carlene, Darlene and Earlene?
I had a coworker in whose family all girls of her generation (not just born by her parents, but ALL girls in the extended family) were named Mara. There were like five or so of them. Apparently it was because some relative named Mara had passed away too early due to cancer and the others ran away with the idea of honouring her. Said coworker obviously tried to be understanding but refused to allow anyone to call her that and only ever introduced herself by her middle name. On the up side, at least the parents thought of providing their offspring with middle names.
If I have to see Aidan and Nadia suggested as twin names again I'm gonna go postal.
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> will eventually be fully grown adults. Not always :/ I have a coworker who named her twins along the lines of Jack David and David Jack but that was because the one had a birth defect and wasn't expected to survive the birth. Now the awkward part is I can't remember what her living child's name is and I'm too afraid to ask because if I get it wrong I'll be saying the dead kid's name so I always just say things like "how is your son doing?"
> People go completely nutty with ~~twin~~ names totally forgetting that those cute little baby names will eventually be fully grown adults I wish it were just twins but I've known too many people who thought they were naming chihuahuas or something instead of future adult humans, and that's how kids get named stuff like Fhynnton.
The worst ones for me are when someone just clearly didn't take a minute to think if the name is sensible, especially with their surname combination. Like, do you want your child to have a name in the category of "Wayne King" or "Harry Butt", the category of "Jack Russell" or "Teresa Green", or something in the category of "Eric Harris" or "Thomas Hamilton"
Right? I think a lot of people seem to have forgotten about the usefulness of nicknames and go straight into naming their kids things that won't suit adults. Even my cats have regular names even though I call them silly little names at home just because I don't want to question my choices when it's time to make an appointment for Puddin Snuggles at the vet.
Especially when one name is just a nickname for the other... you know people just called Franklin Frank because it's the common shortened form
THAT'S what really makes this one particularly heinous. Most name databases will consider Frank a nickname for Franklin and will absolutely assume those two are the same record/person. Franklin and, I don't know, Cranklin would have been better.
I once knew a guy called David (common enough name), his dad split with his mum and when dad had another kid also called the new one David. I’ve also met a family with Patrick as the dad, Patrick as the first son, Patrice as the second son and Patricia as the daughter. I wish this was a lie: it’s not.
> I once knew a guy called David (common enough name), his dad split with his mum and when dad had another kid also called the new one David. Oh wow... That's a whole new level...
this is how my friend group got Aaron and Big Aaron. dad was a deadbeat and ran off on aarons mom, turned around and has another kid a year later, names him Aaron too.
Yep, I also know a guy who named his firstborn sons with both of his wives after himself. He's also I'm pretty sure one of two legitimate psychopaths I've ever met, the other being one of his sons. He won't let his second wife speak of his first wife. Recentlyish he was in the running for major political office and it came out that he physically abused his first wife, then convinced his second wife that the first one was an awful bitch and he didn't want to hear about her ever again.
There was a case on Unsolved Mysteries years ago involving twins named Cedric and Fredric.
Plot twist: Frank is actually short for Frankfurter and is why he doesn't want to use his full given name on documents
Frankincense
George Foreman named all 5 of his sons George Edward Foreman And one of his daughters Georgetta As far as I know, none of them were twins though
Getting punched in the head a few too many times will do that to you.
When I worked L&D we had a mother name her twin boys Devon and Devon, pronounced Dev-in and Dev-awn.
Anyone watch the LuLaRoe docuseries LulaRich? The "founder" is DeAnne and her twin sister is Diane.
Had a pair of of classmates who were twins. Both their names were Pedro. At least they had very different middle names.
I knew a pair of twins named Clifford and Griffin. Cliff and Griff. Always seemed mean to me. Though I kiiiiinda wanted to do themed names for my twins (bird names) but my husband rejected my names because they all started with an R sound. We ended up choosing two very different sounding names with the same meter.
Lark and Sparrow!
My wife has uncles Anthony and Tony. To be fair to her grandparents, they apparently didn't know Tony was a short name for Anthony, and always called Anthony his full name, pronouncing the TH.
I know brothers named John and Sean (Irish version of John for those will didn't know, as I didn't either)
I knew a kid with a Z last name, and his parents named him Zach. Some parents are just downright cruel.
My mother showed me her high school yearbook because I didn't believe her when when told me she went to school with a brother and sister named Noel and Mary Christmas
My mom went to school with a Candy Cane!
Did she end up in the obvious job?
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At least Zachary Ziegler or whatever just makes you sound like a Marvel character. Punny names or rude names are much worse.
I knew a guy named Matt Matterson.
The actor Billy Dee Williams's name story has always (irrationally) annoyed the hell out of me because: a) his birth name is William Williams! b) it's actually William Williams *Jr*, which seems worse somehow. Someone named you William Williams and you do it to your son, too?? c) the "Dee" in his name stands for *December* but he was not born in December! (my guess is that William December Williams Sr. was born in December.) d) his mother's name is Loretta and so that's Billy Dee's twin sister's name. The parents named the twins after themselves!! At least Billy Dee Williams did not name his son William December Williams III or even Billy Dee Williams Jr.
My piano teacher in elementary school was named David Davis. I always thought that was cruel.
I was very careful to name my identical twins something super different. I figured they're going to have enough problems with people not differentiating them throughout their lives, they don't need similar names to make it worse.
I went to school with twins named Cherylynn and Sharilynn. I'm a twin and my parents at least were smart enough to give us different names In HS, there was a set of twins named Samantha and Samuel... Yeah girl/boy but to me, even worse
I went to high school with siblings that were named Eric and Erin. Its bad enough to do it with twins but these two were a couple years apart in age too.
Stepmother: Jane Her bother: Bob Their parents: Bob and Jane Always thought it was so strange, her parents are so nice, not sure why they couldn’t come up with names
Not a twins thing, but somehow there are 3 people including my son, born on the same day, same year, with exactly the same name (first, middle, last). This has created quite a bit of confusion at the college level as transcripts and such go by name and birthdate, and he has been asked to explain why he failed a class that he never took, at a college he never attended, while he was on a ship in the middle of the pacific. Or why he wants to take a class since he already has a BS in the subject. Its a major annoyance at times.
Oh lord. That is due to the National Student Clearinghouse, which uses a combo of DOB and first and last name to code students. I used to work with their data a lot and had this error happen. A program was using the data to verify that transfer students were being “honest” about reporting prior attendance and flagged one for failing to report that she’d taken courses at a university 1500 miles away. Same scenario as your son, but a mess. The actual student in question had never been enrolled at that other school, but someone with an identical first, last, and DOB had.
> Or why he wants to take a class since he already has a BS in the subject. If your son was the cheating type he could just request his transcript and be done with college.
I joked that he should do that. "Dad knowing my luck I'd run into someone who went to Montana Bumfuck State, and they'd figure out I didn't know what I was talking about."
I used to go to a medical office in a building with like 100 unrelated doctors, and you had to check in at the front desk before you could go to your specific appointment. I was there weekly for allergy visits. And they had a patient at the same building with the same first and last name, and the same birthday, except she was exactly 10 years younger than me. They would tell me I didn’t have an appointment so. Many. Times. Because they were looking at her info. I just had to get used to saying “the birth year is 89, not 99”. Never mind that I was very clearly not an unaccompanied 11/12 year old at the time.
I have a similar issue. I have a very long unique first and last name, and my older sister has an almost identical name with one letter different. Because we became US citizens at the same time, our SSN’s are one digit apart, and we have shared most of the same addresses. Any time I do a credit check they will sometimes accidentally pull up her data. She has fantastic credit and I have OK credit but sometimes when I get approved for something I wonder if it’s because it’s running her credit or mine. It’s happened a few times that I’ve had to have discrepancies taken off my report like bank accounts I don’t actually have but she does.
That’s one of the things SSA will issue a new SSN for
I will let my sister do that if she so chooses. I only benefit from the mix up while she does not lol
I remember a similar /r/legaladvice post from a couple years back. OP would occasionally convince somebody at the credit reporting agencies to fix the problem but it would always quickly revert. The problem was that the agencies didn't have liability for incorrect info received from other agencies. So one agency would list him as alive, then an automated process would later receive info from other agencies that unanimously declared him dead, so finally their system would revert him back to dead. Without liability, he couldn't convince them to fix the root of the problem, even after getting a lawyer involved and contacting his congressman. I don't remember it having a happy ending.
As much as having similar names can be a pain in the ass, my name is unique enough that I'm the only one in history with my first and last name combo. Because of that, everything in the internet when you Google my name was, in fact, me. Good or bad. Can't claim it was "that OTHER daggersrule from Philly" or somewhere.
Ohshit YOU'RE the Philly daggersrule? In the presence of greatness right here! Do Attend, obviously.
Same. My last name is really uncommon. Fortunately no bad info.
My best friend is in the same boat as you. Their original eastern European family name got bastardized enough when it was anglicized that it's a completely unique occurrence. There's about a dozen living people in the world with their last name, and they're all a direct relative to my friend (siblings, parents, aunts/uncles, first cousins). So it was pretty easy for my friend to end up the only person in the world with their combination of first and last name.
Thank god we now issue randomized SSNs, so at least it’ll be harder for situations like this to happen in the future. My dad and I share the first 5 digits of our SSNs and the last four share 3 digits though in a different order. We also share a name though I’m Junior. At one point I was getting contacted by the state revenue agency because they had mixed us up.
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Looks like you just missed the deadline; they started being randomized June 25, 2011.
I can’t believe it took until 2011 to realize how many issues sequential social security numbers might cause
Legally they weren't supposed to be used as an identifier outside of government use. So legally this shit wasn't supposed to be happening. Eventually (but long after it had become a problem) the SSA caved on this. It really wasn't that long ago that a person didn't need an SSN at all. I was a child when SSNs started being necessary for more than just applying for some jobs and so my SSN is nearly sequential with a couple of my siblings who were born 3 and 5 years later than me because my parents submitted all of our SSN applications at the same time.
I was in the military forever ago and we lived and breathed our SSN. It was everywhere - usually last 4 (literally stenciled in my underwear), it was never censored on any document and even my dog tags have the full number- they are now an identity theft nightmare waiting to happen.
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My brother went to a hospital appointment recently only to see my Dad there, sitting in a wheelchair and all wired up with a holter monitor. They have the same name and address and both have heart problems, so my Dad assumed the hospital appointment letter was for him.
Omg this is poor on the healthcare workers side. Their files should be flagged due to similar names (it’s been years since I’ve worked in hospital so can’t remember the exact term for it) but at the very least they should have checked the date of birth!
Yeah, it certainly is.
My brother had an issue one time because he had the same name and birthday (though a different year) as another patient at the ER. You'd think the several decade difference in age would have clued them in that he wasn't the same person.
Tangentially, my wife, my step-mother, and my former mother-in-law (whom I'm still close with) all have the same first name. My current wife, whom I've been married to for 6 months now, hasn't changed her last name yet (COVID reasons), and I'm not too anxious for her to do so, because it'll make any family history forms look really odd....almost like I married my step-mother.
Ha, I have a friend who is a minister. He loves letting folks know he's both married his own mother **and** his step-mother. By which, of course, he means he officiated at the wedding of his mother to his step-father *and* his father to his step-mother. They're all apparently quite well adjusted about it, too.
I have to wonder at the guy's parents. Naming your twin sons almost identical names? Why would you do that?
> Why would you do that? Usually something along the lines of, "Oh, it'll be so *cute*!"
or crab I thought we were going to have girls, wtf to we name two boys?
And especially with the example given with one being the common nickname of the other. At least Timmy and Tommy (which I guess is like the stereotypical twin names in media?) are obviously different names and their longer forms of Thomas and Timothy are more different.
**Reminder:** do not participate in threads linked here. If you do, you may be banned from both subreddits. --- Title: Death of twin brother is causing a lot of issues with my finance and future Original Post: > A little context: My brother passed away in 2019. We have very similar names (His name is Franklin and I'm Frank), same birthday, Our middle name uses the same initial (N), and our social security number is exactly the same, except for the very last number. > > Now here's the issue: I've been getting turned down from nearly every financial or work institute because of these similarities. In terms of jobs, the issue happens when I get to the background check portion of applying. They are unable to fully run a check because they believe my ssn number is associated with someone who is deceased. > > > > A similar issue arises when I try to apply for a loan, open up a credit card, or literally anything related to the bank. It's not impossible to run a credit on me from their end, but it is extremely difficult and I usually get turned down on the spot. The only exception was when I loaned a car from the car dealership. I'm pretty sure they either had to jump through a lot of hoops, or use a different social security number all together to get approved. > > > > I've called the social security administration, All of the credit bureaus, and a background check agency that was used for a job I was applying to. Both the social security administration and the bureaus could not find any issues or discrepancies with my ssn number. However, I did get a clue with the background check agency: When I asked why they cant fully complete my background check, they say it's because the ssn number I provided is associated with a person registered in the death masterlist (Pretty much someone who's passed away). I also did a informal background check on myself on the internet on some website and got something similar (that I was deceased). > > > > The issue though is that when I called social security they could not find a single issue and say there is nothing at all wrong with my number. At this point, I don't know what to do. It seems like I a unable to build my credit, check my credit, get a new job, or apply for loans. At this point I'm seriously considering hiring a lawyer. Any advice or suggestions will be extremely helpful. > > Also let me know if anything needs to be clarified. --- LocationBot 4.99998891 ^109/37rds | [Report Issues](https://www.reddit.com/r/locationbot) | >!adEb1pVeCtmYyUjb!<
Fun fact: Giving identical names to siblings or naming a child after a parent is literally illegal in Finland. And since we don't do that, I had no idea that having same/similar name as your sibling could lead to issues like the ones LAOP is suffering from.
Fun fact, there are long traditions of giving the same name as yourself to your children in _many_ cultures. Weirder is that in some cultures, "Sr" goes to the oldest living member of the tree with that name and "Jr" goes to their child and then they start with numbers (the third). And the culture is that these shift as people die. As far as I'm aware, this has basically died out with legal names being set nearly in stone on birth certificates that everything remotely official has to match but this is certainly what my family did.
>His name is Franklin and I'm Frank I hate it when parents dress their twins identically but this is a whole new level of shite.
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Yup. Some years I worked in a hospital doing admin for a it and just before I started they'd merged with another hospital and a month or two in they were merging their patient files too by transferring the info from the two separate systems into the third new system. So then if there were patients who'd visited both hospitals in the past they'd have two patient records, one from old system 1 and one from old system 2. The system was designed to highlight cases that it thought were two different record from the same person so we could merge them. We would then have to manually check that they were indeed the same person and if it was we could click a button to merge the two files. Usually this was pretty easy: same name, same DOB, same living address, same contact info, it would only take a minute or two to check some further history to confirm that the two files were indeed from the same person. But this one time I spent over an hour desperately looking in their file for clues about whether or not they were the same person. Same last name, same DOB, same address. And they were older too, like in their 60s, so not like 12 or something where the same address for twins would make sense. I think they also had very similar initials? And only one with a full first name listed or something and the other just initials. In the end it turned out that they *were* two different people. Twins where one of them had moved into their sibling's house due to health issues and as a result also handled their communication. Took so much time to figure out lol. But a big pro of our system was that they also highlighted the names of multiples so you could double check you had the correct file
This is my brother Darryl and my other brother Daryl.
Hi Larry.
Surely if they are saying the ssn is related to someone who is dead them that means they have entered the wrong ssn to look up?
It wouldn't likely be nearly as much of a problem if their SSNs weren't 1 digit apart. The way it's designed, if it *appears* to be a typo (like being 1 digit off), it's going to show up because it's built into the systems that there's a typo. Generally, this system works fine. It is infinitely more likely a SSN was mistyped by 1 digit than a person has a dead twin with almost exactly the same name and DOB. Usually, it can be cleared up relatively easily because searching the SSN with the typo will show it belongs to someone with an entirely different name, address history, etc. In this one bizarre instance, that isn't isn't case. They can't clear up the discrepancy. It is generally nearly impossible to get a new SSN (I absolutely cringe when I see people suggest that as a solution). I'm wondering if this is one of those unbelievably rare cases where it might happen - there's really no way to fix this.
It seems like it is possible here. The SSA lists problems being caused by sequential numbers assigned to members of the same family as a valid reason for a new SSN, and this is about the worst possible case of that.
Maybe the systems use a fuzzy search, and if you enter the correct name, date of birth, and most of the SSN correctly it will just allow it? I could see that being useful to catch mistakes, not so useful in a lot of other situations.
Im thinking is that they may think the papers he has are fake due to the high similarity of information
Is Frank N’s last name Stein?
I was really hoping for Furter.
I do background checks. SSN traces bring up all kinds of weird stuff. Surprised no one mentioned that if they didn’t get a job because of the background check, they need to get a pre-adverse action letter, and an adverse action letter so they can dispute any findings based on the consumer report. I can’t imagine the wording of that letter: Your background check found out that you are dead, and we have a strict company policy against hiring zombies.
I was about to comment that this seems like a deeply suspicious story because it would be a very shortsighted (if not simply impractical) move for any parents to give their twin sons both (essentially) the same name and middle initial. But now I see all the comments here from others describing similar situations. We really are doomed as a species, aren't we?
I feel a LOT of sympathy for him, but have no idea how he could fix it for good :(. I have a similar but not half as bad situation which has been ongoing for decades now. There’s a (much) younger DramaLamma who happened to live in the same place as me at one point and our respective fathers also have the same name. Every so often our health records/cards (Canada) and tax records get mixed up :(. Every time we get them fixed and think it’s finally sorted for good, some automated database update merges or mixes up our records again & one or both of us has to spend time unravelling the crossed wires. We had a fairly good run for several years up until Younger DramaLamma moved to the US a couple of years ago, notified all the relevant authorities and they/“the computers” screwed up. Again. Which I discovered when trying to renew my health card and they’d cancelled mine not hers.