{"id":498,"date":"2006-07-06T16:37:43","date_gmt":"2006-07-06T21:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=498"},"modified":"2007-05-24T13:46:37","modified_gmt":"2007-05-24T18:46:37","slug":"whats-in-a-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=498","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a name?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pseudonymous bloggers Ubu Roi<\/a> and Wonderduck<\/a>, along with Steven<\/a> are talking about who they are and who they are not. Then Steven says, “Yeah, right, like anyone is really named ‘Shamus’. You people will believe anything, you know that?” <\/p>\n

Heh.<\/p>\n

But since you brought up the subject of my name…<\/p>\n

It’s true that Shamus is a pretty rare name, although it isn’t nearly as exotic as my middle<\/em> name, which I’ll get to later.<\/p>\n

Shamus is Irish for “James”. In Ireland, there are tons of people named “Seamus”, which is the same name, Just like “Shawn” is a variant of “Sean”. Either way, it’s pronounced so that it rhymes with “famous”. <\/p>\n

Vanity searches on google have revealed two other Shamus Youngs in the world. One is a PHD of some sort and his name crops up on University webpages. The other is either a boxer or a boxing journalist and his name appears on websites talking about boxing. If there are any others, they don’t have any web presence. Hits related to me go way back to ’94 or so. There are Doom levels and such that I made at the time which are still floating around out there. <\/p>\n

Having an unusual first name is pretty nice, although it also has drawbacks for absent-minded introverts like me. It’s a good conversation-starter, and it makes me quite memorable. However, people are far more likely to remember my name than I am to remember theirs. People will come up to me in public and start talking to me, and I’ll have no idea who they are. We probably met by chance years earlier, and it stuck in their minds but not in mine. I blame this on my unique name, although it’s possible that I’m just a rude self-absorbed dolt.<\/p>\n

Oh yeah. My middle name. It starts with a “T”, and it’s enough to give Captain Kirk a run for his money, although it’s not Tiberius. This means my initials spell STY, which is kind of annoying, so I tend to not use my middle initial unless I have to.<\/p>\n

As of right now, if you Google for “Shamus Young” you have to go to page 3 before you see stuff not related to me. There is one for a Dr. Barry Shamus. Strange. That is the first time I’ve ever seen “Shamus” as a last name. Odd. <\/p>\n

When my dad named me he was really into Greek mythology. So… any guesses about my middle name? I’ll post it later today, but let’s see if anyone knows it already. Aside from my brothers. (No fair giving it away, guys!)<\/p>\n

UPDATE: In the comments, Cineris guessed it: Shamus Telemachus Young<\/p>\n

No, I’m not kidding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pseudonymous bloggers Ubu Roi and Wonderduck, along with Steven are talking about who they are and who they are not. Then Steven says, “Yeah, right, like anyone is really named ‘Shamus’. You people will believe anything, you know that?” Heh. But since you brought up the subject of my name… It’s true that Shamus is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}