I was recently surfing the web (what a wonderfully mixed metaphor that is!) when I came across a page about someone with the same name as a friend of mine. What made this interesting is that the name was spelled in the same unusual manner which my friend had selected in part to make her name — which she considered too common — unique. I felt, of course, the usually wry surprise one feels at seeing a person frustrated in their silly attempts at (what at least can seem like) pride. Greek tragedy was full of that sort of humor, but it wasn't what really caught my attention. I started thinking about the whole idea of liking or disliking a name because of its commonality.
At first glance, it seems like just another manifestation of the human affliction of not being able to enjoy something because we've enjoyed it before — that we never experience anything good if we already know it. This was beautifully described by Chesterton:
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
But this isn't it. Of course the explanation generally given is that by a person having a common name, they feel boxed in, like they're expected to be according to some mold which really doesn't fit them. There is something to be said for this view. But more interesting is the obvious question that it raises: why are we content to reuse names? Even in cultures without a set of names used only for people, they reuse names normally used for things. Calling somebody snowflake may be unusual among people — though it probably won't be — but it's not at all unusual among the universe. Every year there are billions of things in the world with that name.
Undoubtedly there is some linguistic explanation — there are a relatively finite number of phoneme combinations which we can comfortably string together and remember, relatively few phonetic combinations sound pleasant, etc. Still, as a rule humanity doesn't really try.
William Shakespeare is in no danger of being confused for any one of his fellow creatures — he's in no danger of being lost in a wash of homogeneity — yet he has a name as common as dirt. Edgar Allen Poe didn't have an unusual individual name, and neither did Samuel Clemens. But that last example is the most interesting, because if 'Samuel' is not an exotic name, when he wanted to write he took up the name 'Mark', which is even more unremarkable. Indeed, the very phenomenon of pen names (and stage names) shows this enigma plainly: when people want their name to be common among their peers, they choose a name which is already common among their peers.
It would be too fanciful to say that when a man wants to be marked out for special distinction, he specially humbles himself, but certainly he chooses a name which will not bring him any distinction. Now, there is of course in all humanity the animal tendency to like that which is like us, and to dislike that which is different, and this goes a long way toward explaining pen names. Still, though, it is interesting to think that when a person wants to become unusually famous, he sets about first becoming usual. When a man wants to be well know, he starts by emphasizing to his peers what he has in common with them.