What's in a name?

An email last week from my good friend Jim Patterson – howmanyofme.com – was too good to pass up. Curiosity may have killed a cat, but it only served to stir mine. So, I typed my name in and here’s what I discovered.

There are 5,015,094 people in the U.S. with the first name John. Statistically, John is the second most popular first name – no surprise -- and 99.63 percent of people with the first name John are male -- Surprise, surprise.

There are 27,497 people in the U.S. with the last name Inman, statistically the 1,298th most popular last name.

Now, John Inman, that’s another can of worms. There are no less than 100 with same name as mine. The closest to me is right here in East Texas, New London . Actually, I knew that already, because my bank account when I lived in Kilgore got confused with his. I couldn’t figure out where my checks were going, so I found out there were two John Edward Inmans with accounts at the same bank. Figure out the odds of that happening.

When I later worked at the newspaper in Longview , I even worked with his wife. She worked in make-up, but I didn’t discover it until she asked me one time what my middle name was. Turns out, she, too, was married to a John Edward Inman. I didn’t find out much about him, because they had divorced. She lived, of course, in New London , not far from Kilgore. New London is famous, because in 1935, there was an explosion there and it is still the worst explosion in school history.

Anyway, a further search of John Inman on the World Wide Web, brought up the 100 people with my same name. Years later, the closest was John A. Inman living in Houston . I don’t have any idea where the John E. Inman who lived in New London now resides.

There is a John Inman in Tulsa , but I don’t know his age or any of his kinfolk ( Chad and Marilyn), so there’s little chance I would know him. There is John A. Inman living in Odessa , TX , but he is 77 years old. Otherwise, several John Inmans live in Tennessee ( Knoxville and Jackson ), several in Mississippi , Arkansas and in Kansas and one in Florida .

Alas, none of them are kin.