It’s my name, for goodness sake
It’s my name for goodness sake
I remember my sense of outrage at primary school when another girl called Rachel appeared in a class below me, as I’d never known another person with the same name and so made the natural assumption that I was unique.
Now I face an altogether more perplexing situation - a namesake, who not only shares both my first name and my surname, but like me is also a journalist, works in Manchester and is employed by Reach at the Manchester Evening News, where I worked 20 years ago for more than a decade.
It is more than disconcerting - probably for the ‘other Rachel Pugh’ too. We are approximately 30 years different in age. Whilst I’ve built up my name and award-winning reputation for writing on health and medicine with the broadsheet newspapers (especially The Guardian) and for giving a voice to those who lack one, my namesake is fashion, beauty, shopping and money editor for the MEN. Her published views on vaccination during the pandemic are not my own.
I have received complaints about articles I have not written. Friends from MEN times who I met at the funeral of a former colleague had made the assumption that the Rachel Pugh writing about bread machines and make-up was me, and said: “We assumed you’d fallen on hard times.”
Companies like ResponseSource producing journalistic lists for PR companies have conflated our profiles, and Google now produces a grotesque mixture of ‘other Rachel’s’ portrait with pickings from my career, when asked to search for 'Rachel Pugh journalist’.
As friends and colleagues have said: “You could not make it up.”
The trouble is, there is little that can be done. According to the UK Copyright Service, you can not copyright a name, even if the confusion is professionally damaging, as can be the case for a journalist who trades on their own name.
I’m in good company as social activist Naomi Klein has often been confused with author and conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf. Klein’s fightback came in the form of her new book, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World. In the beginning of it she describes her namesake as “A person whom so many others appear to find indistinguishable from me. A person who does many extreme things that cause strangers to chastise me or thank me or express their pity for me.”
I feel Naomi Klein’s pain. A name is intensely personal and it is with us for life.. Actors do not suffer in this way as their union Equity does not allow a person to register, if there is already a namesake on their books.
Our names form a large part of our identity. Say Boris and we know exactly who we’re talking about. Would his career have been possible if he were called Phil? Or would Whitney have sold such a spectacular number of records if she were called Cath? (Apologies to all those called Phil and Cath).
If you have a story to tell about your name and namesakes, I’d love to hear from you. Contact me here.
