When I came to work this morning (yes, some of us work while it’s extended weekend for most slow-goers) I opened SSH as usual and logged in at home to plug in to my five chat clients. Fine. On my GNU/Linux system I have a program named ‘fortune’ that pops up a funny/interesting/harassing/lame quote/fact every time I open a new terminal. Also this time. Todays fortune (as it’s known) were a list of famous actors and their real names. I must say I find it rather amusing what people rebrand themself as when they want to become famous. The list is read "Actor name" – "Real name". Check it out:

Boris Karloff – William Henry Pratt
Cary Grant – Archibald Leach
Edward G. Robinson – Emmanual Goldenburg
Gene Wilder – Gerald Silberman
John Wayne – Marion Morrison
Kirk Douglas – Issur Danielovitch
Richard Burton – Richard Jenkins Jr.
Roy Rogers – Leonard Slye
Woody Allen – Allen Stewart Konigsberg

Now. If I was named Konigsberg (Kongsberg is a city in Norway) I may have thought about changing my name myself, as one of my friends (Anders (Hardy)) were born and raised there. For the rest I think that even named hard to spell should be kept, if nothing else – for the sake of keeping the history about your family.

I know there is a lot of kids out there in Norway, Sweden and Denmark named Hansen and Hanssen, but I’ll think about that when I’m going to have one myself. Until then I’m me.