I always knew the ‘el’ in my name meant God (Daniel meaning ‘God is my Judge’ or ‘Judged by God’) – it turns out that embedding the name of a god in a name is called theophory.

The obvious examples are the Els (Elizabeth, Daniel, Samuel etc.), the Yahs (Jonathan, Joshua, Jeremy) and the Abduls (from abd + Allah) but the most random example has to be Martin, as in Mars the God of War.

It would also be pretty cool if the latter part of Jesus’ name was in reference to Zeus.

Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.  Upon entering a name, it scours the Internet looking for characterizing statements to use in its analysis.  After suitable information has been found, the viewer watches as the machine tries to make sense of the displayed text.  Once it has reached its final conclusions, the resulting “Personas vector” is displayed and annotated with a minimal legend.

It’s a bit silly really but here’s my ‘Persona’ anyway (click for bigger):

Mine clearly reflects the various sportsmen and sports writers I share my name with as well as the W3C Dan Connolly.

(via Cool Infographics)

• Worst Nickname – James the Be-shitten
• Most like a Comic Book Villain – The Universal Spider

more

I’ve been aware of this Dan Connolly for quite a while but it wasn’t until I started seeing how high I ranked on Google that I found out about some of my other namesakes. So, starting with him we have:

• W3 Dan Connolly – not sure what I can say about this Dan Connolly, the Semantic Web sounds awesome, just also a little bit like Skynet.
  
• New England Patriots Dan Connolly – He’s 6′ 4″ and weighs 313 pounds. Should some dystopian future where everyone must be uniquely named and namesakes are forced to fight to the death come to pass I hope I don’t draw this guy.
• Seattle Singer Songwriter Dan Connolly – he was a U.S. Navy diver specializing in Explosive Ordnance Disposal for 11 years. And he trained dolphins.
• Sports Columnist Dan Connolly – He writes for the Baltimore Sun, I’ll see if he pops up in Season 5 of The Wire.
• Boxer Dan Connolly – Heteroanthroponymageddon isn’t looking good for me.
• Wine Connoisseur Dan Connolly – He likes Morrisey.
• Last (and I think by most measures least) we have Governor Dan Connolly – I take back everything I’ve ever said about moustaches being cool.

*aptronym (n): A name that inadvertently describes its bearer’s occupation.

I think my personal favourites from this list have to be Dr. Kevin Blinder the Opthamologist, Les Plack the dentist, and Dr. Bonnie Beaver, the gynaecologist.