A Ben Jones guilty admission. Yes I googled, "Ben Jones", my own name.
Posted: Wednesday, March 26, 2008
by Ben Jones
Too-Write!
A 95% true story by Ben Jones.
I always figured my name was an easy one to remember, because everyone seemed to be able to remember it. Every party I ever went to, there was always someone available to take great delight in greeting me by name. "Hey Ben, how's things?"
What's wrong with that you ask?
Nothing really, except I'm pretty sure I don't know that many people and invariably, the greeter at said party would be grinning away at me like a chesire cat, while awaiting my friendly retort, replete with mnemonic appellation, i.e. for me to remember their name.
Have you ever had to fumble out one of those tired, old and obvious responses? "Oh hi, great to see you again"... whoever you are.
Now I'm pretty sure I'm at a disadvantage, because "Ben" is about as easy as it gets: Three letters and none of them tricky. Sure, the "B" can be a little sneaky hiding away silently in such words as doubt and lamb (English spellings of course). However, as it happens, it isn't silent in "Ben" or even in "Benjamin", at least not the way I spell them.
Oh to be called Tiberius or even Mahershalalhashbaz (the longest name in the Bible, Isaiah 8:1). Then I'd certainly make a more serious effort to remember people, just so I could rush up to them at parties and greet them by name with a big grin on my face. That would sure teach them a lesson!
Anyway, the other day I decided to do a search on Google to see just how common my name was and how many other poor Ben Jones' are out there struggling through the same terrible social affliction. As it turns out, I'm as common as muck because there's an awful lot of us around.
To be precise, Google returned 10,600,000 listings for the search phrase "Ben Jones". Seriously!
Now, I've done a few searches in my time and that seemed like an awful lot of results to me. So as a point of comparison, I punched in 3 of my friend's names just to see what would happen and all of them were under 1 million results. I win; no contest, yeah for me!
Naturally, I started looking through the 10 billion or so results to see if I could find a page that was actually about me. Come on, admit it, we all do it. Beside, it's perfectly natural, as long as you don't get caught doing it!
Let's just say that I got bored pretty quickly (about 20 pages into the Google results) from looking at all the cool and impressive things the other Ben Jones' are up to, especially considering how I'm not doing any of those things. To be honest, they seem to like rubbing it in my face what with all their fancy web pages coming up so early in the search results.
So where's the so called camaraderie I ask you, the unifying spirit between us kindred names? My advice is, don't trust anyone that has your name, because, as hard as this is to believe, not one of those Ben Jones' even mentioned me on their website or blog. Even worse than that, I couldn't find a single reference to me, their name buddy, on any of their fan sites either. Oh did I forget to mention that most, if not all of the other zillion or so Ben Jones' seem to be famous?
Rather than wallow in my own self pity or think about how incredibly unfair the world is to people with the name Ben Jones, unless of course you happen to be one of the other 10,599,999 Ben Jones' in the world, I decided I'd be the bigger man and mention some of my more prominently achieving name sakes. Here's just a few of them and what they're known for:
What's wrong with that you ask?
Have you ever had to fumble out one of those tired, old and obvious responses? "Oh hi, great to see you again"... whoever you are.
Now I'm pretty sure I'm at a disadvantage, because "Ben" is about as easy as it gets: Three letters and none of them tricky. Sure, the "B" can be a little sneaky hiding away silently in such words as doubt and lamb (English spellings of course). However, as it happens, it isn't silent in "Ben" or even in "Benjamin", at least not the way I spell them.
Oh to be called Tiberius or even Mahershalalhashbaz (the longest name in the Bible, Isaiah 8:1). Then I'd certainly make a more serious effort to remember people, just so I could rush up to them at parties and greet them by name with a big grin on my face. That would sure teach them a lesson!
Anyway, the other day I decided to do a search on Google to see just how common my name was and how many other poor Ben Jones' are out there struggling through the same terrible social affliction. As it turns out, I'm as common as muck because there's an awful lot of us around.
To be precise, Google returned 10,600,000 listings for the search phrase "Ben Jones". Seriously!
Now, I've done a few searches in my time and that seemed like an awful lot of results to me. So as a point of comparison, I punched in 3 of my friend's names just to see what would happen and all of them were under 1 million results. I win; no contest, yeah for me!
Naturally, I started looking through the 10 billion or so results to see if I could find a page that was actually about me. Come on, admit it, we all do it. Beside, it's perfectly natural, as long as you don't get caught doing it!
Let's just say that I got bored pretty quickly (about 20 pages into the Google results) from looking at all the cool and impressive things the other Ben Jones' are up to, especially considering how I'm not doing any of those things. To be honest, they seem to like rubbing it in my face what with all their fancy web pages coming up so early in the search results.
So where's the so called camaraderie I ask you, the unifying spirit between us kindred names? My advice is, don't trust anyone that has your name, because, as hard as this is to believe, not one of those Ben Jones' even mentioned me on their website or blog. Even worse than that, I couldn't find a single reference to me, their name buddy, on any of their fan sites either. Oh did I forget to mention that most, if not all of the other zillion or so Ben Jones' seem to be famous?
Rather than wallow in my own self pity or think about how incredibly unfair the world is to people with the name Ben Jones, unless of course you happen to be one of the other 10,599,999 Ben Jones' in the world, I decided I'd be the bigger man and mention some of my more prominently achieving name sakes. Here's just a few of them and what they're known for:
- Ben Jones - American actor (good work), politician (oh dear), playwright (back on track) and best known for his role as Cooter Davenport on the Dukes of Hazzard TV show (a lost cause, let's move on).
- Ben Jones - Associate Professor of Business Management & Strategy (sounds impressive!)
- Benjamin Jones - Successful painter and artist (maybe I could get him to come out and paint my house?)
- Ben Jones - Director of Admissions and Director of Communications for the MIT Office of Admissions (can anyone say " Bureau Of Redundancy Bureau" )
- Ben Jones - Cartoonist (I like cartoons too, yeah)
- The Ben Jones 4tet - Swing and Jazz band (wow, they named a band after me!)
- Ben Jones - UK screen actor and voice over talent (I wonder if he does voices for cartoons, I like cartoons)
- Ben Jones - Novelist (bragger)
- Ben Jones - Radio DJ (Good morning, this....is Ben Jones, and now a word from our sponsor, "Butter Up", the ever handy hemorrhoid cream)
- Ben Jones - Won second place in a beauty pageant (Alright yes, that one was me)
Thus I urge anyone who hasn't already, to type their own name into in a search engine and see how much better everyone else is doing that has your name. Then at least I wont be the only one who feels like they're under achieving!
I guess it's perfectly clear to all of us by now; if you're going to have children and you want them to be famous, call them Ben Jones. Alternatively, if you want them to be cool, calm and collected at parties, then call them something much more difficult to remember.
Oh and one final note to any of the gazillion Ben Jones' out their reading this article, quit making this Ben Jones look bad!
This Article has been viewed 942 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
More commentshey Ben, you spoke too soon, now I'm number 2 ;) lolYeah I'm thinking of getting into life coaching. You know, "just visualise the outcome you want and it will happen". Although maybe that's actually called day dreaming. Is there such a thing as a day dreaming coach??? I could make some serious money if there is! :)
Reading this through the readers club was just as great as the first time! Yeah, my mom new what she was doing when she named me Teresa. After all, I have lived up to the saintly name...BTW Robert says hi back. :-)Shame on me for inflicting my sense of humour on you not once but twice. *grin*.
Twinkle twinkle, little star, Never wonder who you are, You're mum told me you are Ben Although, every now and then, She had to called you Benjamin Yet you still remained her Star. Well, I'm only guessing, but ... :)Thanks for the cute poem Hannah, and of course for reminding us all that we're a star to someone :)
Interesting and amusing and yes I admit it!! I too have googled my name! LOL A good article.Hi Keith, thanks a lot for your comment on my article. I wont tell anyone you've "googled" yourself! :)
Ben-I have to admit the first time I read this article, I LOL! I loved the style and the fact that you gave credit to the other ben's in the world. We discussed the article even today at lunch-it is very nicely done and so relevant today!-btw, i googled my name and came up third! Thanks for the inspiration!Laura, congratulations on coming third; if memory serves me correctly that's a white ribbon! Yeah for you! And thanks a lot for your comments on my article. Funnily enough, it is now the highest rating article in google that actually talks about me (the real Slim Shady); it's coming in a whoppying 147th or something (that's page 15 for the lay people). Of course I had to include shoutouts to all the other Ben Jones' of the world just to get there, but still, here I am. And so, without further ado, I'd like to thank my mother, my father, my 3rd cousin Harold and his twin sister Haroldette, the Prime Minister of Ghana, without who this sentence would be that much shorter and not least of all my dog for chewing up my homework in 5th grade and getting me my first A for creating an authentic looking scroll from the middle ages!
Ben-You are a riot! Thanks for the laugh so early in the morning!Happy to brighten your day! :)
11,300,000 for me, I feel so famous now lol But when I typed my name in backwards, I still got 236? Go figure!Hey Bobby, I'm impressed, 11.3 million is a whole lot of popularity you've got going on! Oh and thanks for the idea of searching my name backwards, now I really know I have too much time on my hands *grin*.
Ben, great article! There's nothing more fun (and voyeuristic and narcissistic and a little sad) than to see what your namesake is up to. I have a suggestion, though. Next time you're at a party try this one: "Hi, I'm Ben Jones, famous actor/cartoonist/radio dj/novelist/painter. It's true, you can Google me and see for yourself!"Stephany, thanks a lot for your comment and of course for the great advice. I'll definitely be giving that a go at the next party I attend. Great idea!! :)
Great article, fun to read and then fun to do!
You won't believe it but my name is ben jones, from west midlands, uk (facebook it if you don't believe me - under lyndon school) and i found this article by searching "how many people are called ben jones in the world" and i guess there is more than i thought.So your not alone in the annoyance of your mondane name ;)
p.s. one thing you failed to mention is the amount of annoyance you can get trying to get a unique username or email adress onlineYou hit the nail on the head with your P.S. Having such a universally popular and fantastic name, means that everyone else has picked up your username ahead of you. I've had to settle with benjones132 before!!! Crazy. :)
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