What's In A Name?

For those of you who know me in real life, you may be wondering about the web address of this website. Well, not about the “writer” part, I think you're all smart enough to figure out why I put that in there, I'm referring to the fact that it features my middle initial, and that's for a few reasons. The first of which is that I just like my middle initial, but it goes a bit further than that.

For my entire life, I've never been unique, at least in naming. The first name Michael (Origin: Hebrew, Meaning: “who is like God?”) was the most popular baby name from the year 1954 until the year 1998, save for 1960 when David strangely supplanted it for a year, so for my entire life, there were always other Michaels in my life. For starters, there were three other Michaels in my own family, my paternal great grandfather, Michael Joseph, his son, my paternal great uncle Michael Joseph, and his son, also named Michael Joseph. And then when I was in school, there were never less than at least two Michaels in every class I was ever in, forcing us both to go by our first name and our last initial, making me “Michael G”, and on one rare occasion, “Michael Gl” when there was another Michael G in the class whose last name happened to come earlier in the alphabet. This also failed when I had a class in high school with five other Michaels, but four of them had it worse than I did because I got to be “Michael G” but they had to be numbered because they were all named “Michael Chen”. In a way, I never had my own identity, I was always one of many. I can't tell you how many times I had someone tell me in high school that they'd tried to get my attention but I ignored them, it wasn't malicious, I swear, it was because when I hear my name being shouted I just assume that they want someone else. Heck, even today if I hear my name called on the street I have to resist the urge to turn around because it's usually a mother yelling at her child and not intended for me. You ever see those personalized license plates in gift shops at places like Disney World? I always had a lot of trouble getting a hold of those, not because my name is so uncommon that they don't warrant getting a plate, but because there are so many Michaels, the shops couldn't keep up with the demand and they were always out, and if they weren't, the name was misspelled “Micheal”. In fact, it even persisted into my current job, where there happened to be another Michael working there long before I started, and thus if anyone needed my attention, they had to ask for “Michael G”, otherwise there would be a lot of confusion. However, he recently left for greener pastures, thus I have become the “Alpha Michael” and now any new Michael will be forced to go by his initial to differentiate himself from me! Victory is mine!

Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the second reason that I've decided to go by my middle initial professionally, it's also because my name is so common that not only are there 412 people with my name in the United States because I'm not even the only Michael Gleason who wants to write for TV and movies! That Michael Gleason was born in 1938 and was a writer and producer for such shows as Peyton Place, McCloud, and the co-creator of the hit series Remington Steele, perhaps best known today as being the first big break for actor Pierce Brosnan, future James Bond. Now, we've never met and we'll never get the chance since he passed away eight years ago. My reasoning for adding the initial, even if I'm far from the only other Michael J. Gleason who wants to go into the entertainment industry is that at least it distinguishes me from the wildly successful Michael Gleason whose success I'll probably never manage to match. I could always change my name or adopt a nom-de-plume, but the issue with that is that I actually really like my name and don't have any name I'd rather go by, so unless I want to do some writing that I don't want to be connected with my name (which is unlikely, I have no shame and will make you read anything that comes to my mind no matter how dumb) I'll need to use that middle initial in order to make sure that I stand out somewhat from the sea of other Michaels.

Except at work though, the Alpha Michael prevails again!