Named Like My Name

An individual has a perfectly unremarkable name, until someone unrelated, but happening to share the same name, becomes well known. This can lead to the namesake basking in reflected glory or plunging into Embarrassing Middle Name territory. Naturally averts the One Steve Limit.

Examples of Named Like My Name include:

Films -- Live Action

• Michael Bolton from Office Space: "It was a fine name... until I was about twelve years old and that no-talent ass-clown started winning Grammys."
• The main character of the French film Camping shares his surname with former president Chirac. When asked why he doesn't change it, he replies "Why should I be the one to change my name?"
• The plot of Saving Private Ryan revolves around finding Private James Ryan and bringing him home to his mother. Midway through the movie, they find James Ryan...but it turns out he's a different James Ryan.

Literature

• Taken to an art form in Bill Fitzhugh's Pest Control, whose lead is named Bob Dillon, and was born a few years before Robert A. Zimmerman, better known as Bob Dylan, became famous. It didn't make for a happy childhood. He spends the entire book being confused with Bob Dylan, even by the CIA.
• Jennifer Lopez in John Dies at the End.
• Basically the whole point of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, where two teenagers in Chicago who share a name meet and then find their lives start to clash.
• Óscar de León, the main character in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, has the name of a famous salsa singer. This is, though, never mentioned in the book.
• John Sandford is fond of this trope. Minor characters named Bill Clinton, James Brown ("Not the James Brown?" "Why yes, I am. This is my disguise: keeps the groupies off."), and Henry Ford (a medical examiner: "doesn't know shit about cars") show up in the Prey and Virgil Flowers books.

Live Action TV

• Elaine's boyfriend Joel Rifkin on Seinfeld, whose name she tries to get him to change because it's the same as the serial killer's. Eventually she breaks up with him over it. (In a Hilarious in Hindsight moment, one of the names she suggests, while desperately flipping through Sports Illustrated, is O.J. If you forget that there was a time before O.J. was a suspected murderer, this comes off as an intentional joke, and you wonder why the audience isn't laughing.)
• NCIS episode "SWAK" has a Dr. Brad Pitt treating Tony for the pneumonic plague.
• Arrested Development gave us George Michael, whose name is perfectly logical (he's named for his grandfather and his father respectively). Almost looks like it could be an Averted Trope because it's only mentioned once in the whole series ("Are you sure it wasn't the other George Michael? You know; the singer songwriter?") but it's clear that the idea of a nerdy, self-conscious teenage kid who questions almost everything he does and thinks being lumbered with George Michael as a name is an intentional layer. He's also never called simply "George".
• A sketch on an early episode of All That had people making wishes before taking shots at a basketball hoop, and having them granted if they make the basket. Kenan Thompson then says, "If I make this shot, I'm gonna meet Michael Jordan!" He makes it, and in walks a very white plumber named Michael Jordan.
• On JAG, Harm convinces a witness to talk by offering to set him up for a date with Jennifer Lopez, not mentioning that he means his dental hygienist.
• In one episode of The Vicar of Dibley, the vicar gets Alice's cousin Reg Dwight, who she's not seen for years, but thinks became some sort of musician, to open the village fete. He turns out, of course, not to be that Reg Dwight.
• On Cheers, Sam discovers that, while drunk, he had bet a stranger that he could marry Jacqueline Bisset within a year. On learning that the other party plans to hold him to that bet (and has a binding contract), he reads over the terms of the bet and realises that it doesn't specify Jacqueline Bisset the actress. He immediately sets out to find another woman of the same name to marry him.

Webcomics

• A variation in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: In the half-issue that started the comic, the titular doctor gets furious at McDonald's after they release "the McNinja Burger". His lawyer tells him that this isn't an unusual case, bringing up a huge protest made up of hundreds of people with the last name McDonald claiming their name was stolen (as well "one Robert Pizzahut").

Web Original

• That Guy With The Glasses has brought up several times in his Critic videos that he hates the cartoon series Doug because his first name is Doug, and many people have made fun of him for this trope. When it's brought up, bad things happen.

Western Animation

• Homer Simpson is the Trope Namer, being first elated to discover that an over-the-top action hero is "named like my name", and then driven to change his name when "Homer Simpson, Police Cop" is Re Tooled as bumbling comic relief.
  • However, he never seems to have read Day Of The Locust.

Real Life

• Would current U.S. President Barack Obama be on the Embarrassing Middle Name page if a man named Hussein and a man named Osama hadn't been enemies of the United States? Sure, the name "Hussein" in Iraq is about as remarkable as the names "Smith" or "Jones" are in the U.S, but the Obama family is not from Iraq, and the name is rare to the point of One Mario Limit in America. A name being common in one country does not make it unembarrassing elsewhere.
• Brig. Gen. Sir Michael Jackson.
  • Not to be confused with the late beer critic of the same name.
  • Or the Los Angeles-based talk radio host, also of the same name.
  • Or the Browns/Ravens wide receiver.
    • Whose actual last name is Dyson, but preferred the last name Jackson.
  • Or the former head of Channel 4 -- What made so many Mr and Mrs Jacksons independently choose the name Michael?
  • Because it was the most common/second most common name in America for a good, long time. And on that note, former Cleveland Indians closer Mike Jackson.
• Nancy Cartwright, author of How the Laws of Physics Lie.
• Really, though, how many people have been embarrassed or received 15 minutes of media obsession fame because they were named Harry Potter, Homer Simpson or Jennifer Lopez? Especially true of Spanish names, as there are 10 extremely common surnames and a lot of chances for redundancy. Several stories involved Jennifer Lopezes having to prove they weren't identity theives.
  • There is a newscaster in the Dallas area named Jennifer Lopez, and the network even ran advertisements talking about how they had their "own star" in her.
  • The Weather Channel also has a reporter named Jennifer Lopez.
  • There is an Australian news reporter named Harry Potter. You can almost feel his "What did I do to deserve this?" when he signs off with "Harry Potter, 10 News."
• There is a mythology/religion author named Michael Jordan.
• The name "Harry Palmer" is not all that rare, even with the presence of a certain actor named Michael Caine.
• In France, there are a lot of people named François Pignon who do not like film director Francis Veber.
• How many Jareds are there on these boards? Now, how many have them have been associated with Subway & diamonds?
• And let's not forget the other apostle Jude. Getting anyone to pray to him was seen as a lost cause — so the Roman Catholic Church made him the patron saint of lost causes.
  • Not to mention all the "na na nas" people named Jude inevitably get.
• There are probably lots of real people named Michael Scott. God help any of them who are office managers.
• French car manufacturer Renault is being threatened with a lawsuit over the proposed name of its new model, the Zoe. Apparently the real Zoe Renault is not amused.
  • ... But it'd be known as the "Renault Zoe", wouldn't it? So, no problem.
• There's a guy in Britain named Slobodan Milosevic.
• Anyone with the same name as a hurricane. Actually, this only applies to one name, as there has never been a hurricane half as famous as Katrina.
  • Brings a whole new meaning to Katrina & The Waves...
• The Levi Strauss jean company. With everybody saying when they meet you, "Like the jeans?"
  • Funny how they never say, "Like the French anthropologist?"
  • Within Christianity and readers of the old testament, the Israeli tribe of Levi can suffer this too..
• Brad Pitt was a guest on a Nickelodeon bump. No, not the Brad Pitt, just a guy who happened to be named Brad Pitt. He showed his driver's license to prove it. No, he had not changed his name.
• It's pretty tough to have two such common names as "Thomas" and "Jones".
  • One is a running back for the Kansas City Chiefs (and previously, the New York Jets).
• Tom Kruse, inventor of the Hoveround.
• In 2010, an Indo-American lawyer named Kamala Harris was elected Attorney General of California. This may have caused some confusion/amusement to Professional Wrestling fans, as 400-pound wrestler James Harris is best known for having used the gimmick of a "Ugandan Headhunter" named Kamala.
• A local news anchor here is called James Brown. He's white, and not very funky.
• Richard Tracy would have been fine, if he hadn't gone into police work, eventually working his way up to Detective.
• There's a man in Florida named Justin Bieber. No, not the Justin Bieber, just some guy who happens to have the same name. He actually had his Facebook account shut down on accusations of being an impostor. To say nothing of the Fangirls.
  • Much like that, there's a British office worker who shares a name with princess-to-be Kate Middleton. She got kicked off Facebook, too.
  • Or an even bigger example: A lawyer named Mark Zuckerberg got the boot off of Facebook because he was apparently trying to impersonate Facebook's creator.
• One of the producers on The Price Is Right is Adam Sandler. No, not that Adam Sandler, though it's hilarious considering his onscreen brawl with Bob Barker in Happy Gilmore.