Will The Real Duncan Elliott Please Sit Down?

There's a song by the band Fleet Foxes called 'Helplessness Blues' that begins: "I was raised up believing I was somehow unique, like a snowflake, distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see." So far so good. It then goes on to say: "And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be, a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me." 

I didn't like my name at first, it made me stand out, and being a kid that was the last thing I wanted. I was the only Duncan at my school, and at college, then I was the only Duncan at my first workplace. By then of course I had got used to being the only one around, and I liked it. 


Then when I changed jobs there was another Duncan, and it felt really weird. Like I'd been robbed of my own distinctiveness. All the Marks, Steves, Richards and Davids I'd grown up with presumably never had this feeling, due to there being at least three other Marks, Steves, Richards or Davids in their class at school and God knows how many at work. 

But at least he wasn't a Duncan Elliott. That particular shock came later when I was sitting in the doctor's surgery in the small village to which I'd moved. I thought the doctor was giving me some funny looks when I started talking about my hay fever. Then he said, quite casually, "How have you been since they removed your bladder?" I was surprised, mainly because to my certain knowledge (unless I'd been kidnapped by aliens and had the procedure done on the mother-ship, along with the obligatory anal probe and memory-erasing) no such serious operation had ever taken place to remove anything from me, let along something so seemingly vital as my bladder. 

Turns out there was another person of exactly the same name as me living in this small community. From that moment I was on my guard, just in case my singular uniqueness of name (or so I had presumed) would be challenged again. Not long after this identity-based trauma I met another Duncan through a colleague, and this new Duncan was nicknamed 'Dunc' or 'Duncs' (and sometimes even 'Funks') by this mates. That wasn't right either because I'm Dunc, Duncs (and sometimes even Funks), not this cheap and nasty pretender to the title. 

Then the Internet came and along with it the vain practice of self-googling. To be fair at first I just did it to make sure the web site I was promoting at the time would be found on search engines, but I then of course discovered a whole universe of Duncan Elliotts. One was a black belt in karate and ran a dojo, one a post-war actor in such movies as The Thief Of Paris, one a pretty amazing rock sculptor, there was a professor with a PhD in Computational RAM, the head of some local authority somewhere, a few photographers, a 'health, fitness and wellness professional,' and quite a few dead Duncan Elliotts, who had achieved various small things. 

From the Internet's Urban Dictionary I also discovered (which I secretly knew to be true already) that; '"A Duncan" is the person that you fall in love with, early on in life. Your first love. Every new partner is measured by Duncan's standards. Obviously, one rarely ends up with one's Duncan as a life partner. However until one is thoroughly over "Duncan" one cannot move on.' How very sad but also very true. The wake of a Duncan is often littered with broken hearts. Still, we must be multiplying (or at least converging) because believe it or not where I live now there are no fewer than three Duncans in my street, I know because I've met the other two. 

I know this sounds like something from that Radio 4 show John Peel (RIP) used to do on Saturday mornings, but I did grow to find it quite reassuring that the global brotherhood of Duncan Elliott is out there, in the world, making and achieving things. Then this very morning I took a call from someone confirming my attendance at an exciting-sounding event in Rome tomorrow. Only they wanted another Duncan Elliott, a different one, not me, some globe-trotting marketing bloke, with a far more exciting life than mine. 

But I'm still the only real one, right?