Too many Dans

Recently I discovered that there’s a punk rocker from England named Dan Curtis. I discovered this because I was editing my artist pages on Apple Music and Spotify. He has a single out that got mixed up with my albums. It’s easy to see how they could mix up to artists with the same name. The mistake has since been corrected but it got me thinking about the ubiquity of my name.

I guess there are very few names that are totally unique. Mine is certainly not one of them. It reminds me of the Dr. Seuss story, Too Many Daves. The story is about Mrs. McCave, who had 23 sons and she named them all Dave. She laments that when she calls out, “Yoo-Hoo! Come into the house, Dave!” she doesn’t get one. All twenty-three Daves of hers come on the run! She goes on to discuss all the silly names she should’ve given them.

Years ago, when I lived in Mountain View, California, there were six patients named Dan Curtis at the same medical clinic. I found this out when I had an MRI done. When I went in to discuss the results, my doctor told me there had been some confusion over which Dan Curtis the MRI belonged to.

Perhaps I should have adopted a unique name for my professional career, but like Mrs. McCave, I didn’t do it and now it’s too late.