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Monday, November 16, 2015

Angela Lansbury - how many people with my name and yours?

Duplicate Names
To all my friends called John Smith and other popular names. I know how you feel. I am Angela Lansbury.
Travel writer and photographer. Author and speaker.

I am not the actress. I would like to be an actress. But I am not a professional actress. Yet.

I am not the only person who shares a name with somebody else. That's why the first thing they ask in court is to give your name and address. Hospitals occasionally give the wrong medication or operation to people with similar names. Mortuaries give the wrong bodies for burial or cremation. Sometimes parents are given the wrong baby.

British royalty give members of the same family the same name. The bane of every schoolchild is remembering Henry V, VI, VII, VIII. The americans like to call parents and children senior and junior.

First Names
In France it is usual to call a girl Marie, then add another girl's name. In Spanish countries you find Maria is the variation used.Variations on biblical names appear around the world in the spelling of the local area.

Family Names
There are six million people called Singh, several million called Modhammed, Patel, quite a few thousand called Lim, Singh, Wong.

Combinations
John  is a common English boys' name. Smith, the man who did ironwork, was a common family name.  The combination John Smith used to be said to be the commonest English name. I find a dozen of most people I look up on LinkedIn and Facebook.

So I am lucky there are only four people called Angela Lansbury. One actress. Two writers. One other.

The other author, so far as I know, writes novels and lives in France. I live in English speaking countries such as England and the USA and Singapore where I taught English. I write how to books and articles, speeches, comic poetry and songs.

English words
You may wonder why I spell out out and explain so many English words. That's because my blog readers include those in America, Russia and around the world. I hate having to go off and look up words when I am reading other people's blogs. I can remember learning new words from the age of 11 onwards at grammar school.

Never mind the three syllable and foreign words. I have had to explain one syllable words such as the word prop to a Korean and plot to a girl from China.

Among my many hats and talents, I teach schools, workshops and private pupils as a home tutor or on Skype. I have taught in England and Singapore. I have taught English language and literature, English as a Foreign Language, speech training for public speaking and presentations, and occasionally French.

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