I didn’t know what a namesake was until I posed a question on a doppelganger post. I had this very interesting experience about twenty years ago, when I went to pick up my oldest daughter’s birth certificate from the county registrar’s office. As a young mother, I had never experienced having to get a birth certificate from the county office here in the United States. I had no idea what I was supposed to say or what forms I needed to fill out.

The lovely ladies at the counter understood my apprehension, and kindly tried to walk me through the process. They started by asking me what my name was, and then they asked what my daughter’s name was. Simple enough so far, right? The ladies felt that our names were unique enough that they could just look them up. They brought this birth certificate to the counter and told me to review it critically. If there were any changes needed, I had to pay $15.00 for each letter added or removed. As a young single mother, they said the perfect thing to make me pay extra close attention to this document; money wasn’t something I had a whole lot of at the time, and every penny counted.

First, I looked at the child’s name. In the first name of the child, there were four letters that needed to be removed and four letters that needed to be added. My little heart skipped a beat. That was already 120 bucks! Then I noticed that the last name was missing a letter, which was another $15.00. Then I looked at the mother’s name, and my heart really started to hit the floor. They’d spelled the first name of the mother with one letter when mine began with two to make the same sound, so that was another three letters. Then I noticed that the last name again was missing a letter, and I was like, “Woah. Woah. Dude, this is not OK, this is not OK!”

 If you’re following along, this had to be one of the most expensive birth certificates ($195.00 for the letters plus another $45.00 for the copy for a total of $240.00). My brain was already overwhelmed, and then I noticed that the date of birth was wrong. The birth certificate that they’d handed me was for a child born in August of that same year that my daughter was born in November.

I pointed this out to the ladies. At this point, they realized they’d inadvertently given me the wrong birth certificate. Yay! We get to start over!

They went to look for my daughter’s birth certificate, and luckily, they found it. After reviewing and seeing I didn’t have to make any corrections, I was a very happy mamma! I only paid $45.00 and walked out with my daughter’s birth certificate. This made for a funny story for a few years.

Now, fast forward another six or seven years. We left this small town and moved to a larger city. We registered my daughter into sixth grade at a middle school near where we’d moved. Don’t you know that other mother and daughter had also moved to the same town and the girl was going to the same middle school as my daughter! I mean, what are the odds?

I figured this would be a fun story to tell y’all to explain what a namesake or an eponym is: It’s two people who have the same name. In our case, the other mother had the same name as me with slightly different spellings, and both of our daughters had the same first and last names, also with different spellings.

I hope this gives you a chuckle and brightens your day.