A student came to my office this week and, upon noticing she had a unique name that I was quite fond of, I told her as much. She replied, “Thank you. My parents named me after a comic book character.”
I stared at her in complete shock.
Eventually, I was able to tell her that I had written, drawn, and published a comic that came out about the time that she was born. And one of the characters in the book had the exact same unique name.
Then, the look on her face mirroring my own, she joined me in the complete-shock staring contest. For about five seconds, we shared this really weird moment where she wondered if she was meeting the guy responsible for her name, and I wondered if I was meeting a woman named after a character I created.
I asked her what kind of comic her parents pulled the name from and, as it turns out, it was a completely different comic. But I don’t think I’ll be forgetting those five seconds any time soon.