The other day, a periodic Google-ing (Googling?) turned up two interesting items. One, there are at least two people fairly big in academia who already have my name, or various components of my name, so I have been correct to style myself with my two last names - not only pretentious, it will also set me apart from these other people.
Two, and this is more disturbing, some geneologist has listed my name, along with the names of all my family members, on his family web site. We are apparently linked on my maternal grandfather's family. It just struck me as somewhat stalker-like, seeing all the names of my family just listed there, on this stranger's geneological list, my parents and my brother, aunts and uncles and cousins, like our names were some sort of butterfly collection to this person.
I'm only vaguely interested in the study of my family tree, one of my uncles has mapped out Mum's side of the family pretty well, but I'd be curious to find out more about dad's family. Not curious enough to pony up for a costly membership to one of theose money-making geneological web sites, however.
This name collection on-line was made even more creepy by the fact that he had only listed husband #1 next to my name. I suppose that's what wigged me out the most. Do you think Mr. Stalker Geneologist would just drop me entirely from his weird record obsession?
