Imagine, just for a minute, that your name is Aliko Dangote, even though your family is not related to that of the famous billionaire. Whenever you go for a job interview, you are asked what your name is and you answer them "Aliko Dangote". When you go to see someone (whom you've not met before) at their office and the secretary ask for your name, you reply: "Tell him Aliko Dangote is here to see him". What thoughts do you think will be on the mind of these people? How will life be like for you?

Though the example above may not be very popular but I've seen something similar. I've seen countless namesakes of some very successful and famous people on Facebook and I try to figure whether their names will have an effect on their lifelong dream and aspirations.

I have a friend named Jimoh Ibrahim. He's over 25 so he couldn't have been named Jimoh because of the billionaire's fame (some people do so e.g. People started naming their children Goodluck immediately after Jonathan became the Acting President). When I asked my friend what is it like to share a name with someone famous, he responded with: "life is not a competition though everybody will like to be known for what they do, except you're an armed robber." If you google the keyword 'Jimoh Ibrahim', you wouldn't find anything related to my friend, even on the 10th page. Why? Because the famous billionaire is always in the news and keeps pushing my friend to page God-knows-what.

Something similar is also occurring in internet blogging right now. This is between Linda Ikeji and Laila Ikeji (no disrespect to both of them). Few months ago, Laila posted a picture of Jim Iyke eating roasted corn in Amsterdam on her blog, later on NL and the thread made the frontpage. This generated maximum publicity for the picture but Jim Iyke took offense at the picture and mistakenly took the fight to Linda Ikeji. This degenerated into a twitter fight between Linda and Jim. When Jim apologised to Linda (maybe after discovering) and it was made clearer that the said picture was posted by Laila, some of the comments on Jim's apology thread were like "an [b]obscure[\b] blogger caused it all".

When I first encountered Laila Ikeji's blog, I'm like "must she be a blogger? She's most likely trying to cash in on Linda Ikeji's goodwill." But later I asked myself "why can't she be a blogger? Because Linda is a successful blogger was not good enough a reason."

Did you share or know someone who share both names with someone famous? How are you or they living it out? If you are not, what advise will you give to people in this position? I'm sure many will advise that these people should live their lives as they would have done if these famous namesakes never existed but one thing is certain, their names will be overshadowed by their famous namesakes, even though they might be successful in their own right.