Do you know who your Googleganger is? Do you know WHAT a Googleganger is?
Oddly, I just learned what that term was tonight shortly before I got an email from mine. The coincidence of that seemed sort of odd to me!
A Googleganger is a completely made-up word that you won’t find it in your favorite dictionary … yet. The word is taken from the German word ‘doopleganger’ which means ‘double-goer’. The meaning is suggesting an eerie similarity between people in appearance or identity.
So taking doopleganger and referring to Google we have ‘Googleganger’ which what happens when you google your own name and find one or more people with the exact same name in the search engine results.
Voila!
I’ve been aware of my googleganger for a while now. She lives on the other side of the country and is a fitness expert. I’ve read her website, seen her pictures and browsed books she has for sale. That’s as far as I ever took it or thought about it. Until a couple of hours ago.
At some point this evening I became aware of the term googleganger for the first time. Then, not an hour later, I got an email from mine. It made me wonder if she had read the same article and googled her name to see if she had one. That would be me.
It sounds kind of cool in a way, especially when you have an unusual name. I mean, if your name is John Doe, there might be too many googlegangers to get too excited about it.
On the other hand, it could create problems. For instance, my googleganger is publishing a new book. It turns out that our views on the issues I write about here are quite different than hers. Polar opposites might be more to the point. Therefore, she very nicely asked if there was something we could do about that because is concerned that our identities will get confused. Can’t imagine why THAT would bother her! 
So, today you have learned a new new-age term. Its likely to get more well known as the internet continues its unlimited expansion. Meanwhile, I have to figure out how to deal with the issue of mistaken identity that is concerning my new acquaintance.
Who is your googleganger?
November 18th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
It looks like I have many,but not exactly. Most have a different middle name, but there are many of me out there. Kind of scary.
November 19th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Have had no experiences with ‘googlegangers’ but their image search page is helpful. Case in point, your post on the famous WWII V-J Day photo. Couldn’t understand at first why my blog was getting all sorts of traffic for one category of posts. It seems many searched Google images for that picture and my blog’s pic was prominently positioned. I credit your post that day for sending me unexpected traffic. Thanks.
November 19th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Ha! That’s interesting Stanford! lol Who would’ve thought it. The search engines aren’t always the brightest bulbs in the pack
Hey Stix - don’t worry about all those googlegangers - you are really one of a kind!