Dave is a big name here too. In fact it was the most popular name for boys the year I was born. There were 6 Davids in my HS in my year. At my work there are 3 others Daves as well. In one of my classes Dave is the teacher. It can be annoying.

All people who know me, other than my family, call me by my surname. And my surname isn't even a first name.

It's a Japanese thing. You wouldn't understand.

I also get my surname instead of my first name as my first name is really common, Michael, and my school had a lot of Michaels.

So Rorie.

Rorie kind of sounds like a barking/howling puppy. Rorrorrorrorrorrr....ie.

I wish more people I know IRL would call me Sherlock.

@rorie: My first girlfriend for some reason instead of calling me Richard called me Rick. No one calls me Rick, I get called a hundred things Rich, Dick, Richy, Tricky, Trekkie, Darth, Garth, Stan, Stanfeild, Ricardo, Ricardo Chico, one guy even knows me as John. NEVER a Rick except my first girlfriend.

Someone I used to work with started calling me Tess, which is part of my last name. It's pretty much the only nickname I tolerate. And one of my college roommates always went by her last name, to the point where it was weird to hear her first name used.

I try to never call people by their last name, probably because I fucking HATE it when people call me by my last name. Hate it. I don't know why.

Who is this Matthew you speak of? I know only Rorie: Master of Puppies.

rorie?

All of my real life friends call me Snake because I do a pretty okay Solid Snake impression, all of my online friends call me Arty or Lina. Sometimes I forget I even have a real given name so whenever I hear it, it's like "What? Oh, right."

I wish I went by something as unique as Rorie. I keep trying to get people to call me Xander instead of Alex. No one's biting.

Damnit, I was going to reply exactly that! :D

I don't go by Matthew either.

Mostly because my name isn't Matthew, but still. Wish it were, though... I always hated mine.

Because Rorie.

I obviously haven't been paying enough attention, because I always had it in my head that it was his first name.

Rorie is a last name, too?

It's pretty common at least in the states for folks to use their middle/last names as a first. I have a friend who goes by her middle name just because she doesn't care for her first. Having a common name is probably the usual reason for people preferring not to go by the first.

Back during the founding of Screened, there were at least three Matt/Matthews around. I think Kessler was around Whiskey Media at that time too.

It also fits since Rorie is pronounced the same way as the first name Rory.

@rorie: Why is it "Rorie" and not "Rawr-rie"?

"Rorie" is closer sounding to "puppy" than "Matthew" is. That's the "reason."

@i_stay_puft: Beats me! Always been the way we pronounce it.

@akyho: To be fair, "tricky" is a pretty rad nickname. I'd go for that one if I were you.

Scooby loves your name, Shag. You never need to be jealous of Freddy.

@mariachimacabre: Poppycock! It's Fred what should be jealous of me! It's MY goddamn van...

And yet who do both of the chicks go with every time you split up and search for clues? Look man, you need to dump them. They're using you. They think you're an easy target because you think your dog can talk.

@mariachimacabre: He can totally talk! Admittedly not very well, but that'll happen when his diet consists entirely of a special blend of shrooms and pot brownies.

It's just like that time I met Don Rickles, Laurel & Hardy, and Mama Cass while demasking yet another caretaker who discovered how to make a Pepper's Ghost illusion. They didn't believe me, either, and Scoob thought it'd be hi-fucking-larious to clam up around them.

Don't think for one second that I've let him off the hook, either. Scooby Snacks look a LOT like Ex-Lax, y'know...

Because his name is "Rorie".

It's like "Madonna" or "F. Scott Fitzgerald".

@rorie: Well Tricky is short for Tricky Dick and when I was 10 walking to the local store. My siser saw somthing shiney in a bush reached in and grabbed it. Then asked if she could eat his bubblegum. I looked and it was a Tricky Dick branded condom....I have a slight aversion to the nick name in the UK.

Not to necro-post, but this thread reminds me of when I was in elementary school and there were three kids named James. James Gasparino, James Delaney, and James Perry. We just called them by their last names for convenience except for James Perry, who demanded to be called James, especially since we called the others by their last names. As if the name "James" was now up for grabs since the other two weren't using it. No one really listened to him, of course, and we just called him Perry (when we called him at all, which was rare because he was kind of an uptight jerk). Even teachers did it for convenience.

Side note: years later, James Perry changed his last name to something else, I think to whatever his stepfather's last name was out of respect for him after he died.

Tl;dr Rorie is a cool name.

I never had a problem with having the same name as someone else until I made a Twitter account, sharing the same name as some dude who works at the BBC meant I used to get @ mentioned a lot.

i know this is old af but i kind of have a weird thing about being called by my surname, it just seems so impersonal. i don't really raise a fuss or am vocal about it though, so w/e. about half at my work call me by it and half call me by my first name. granted there are two other mikes in my dept. so it makes it easier i suppose.

@daveyo520: Ya what you said a year ago.

I lived with two Chris's once. Chris Dyke became "The Duke", then "Duke", then "Count Dookuuuuu", and then just "Dykey". Chris Hutchinson became "Old Man" because he smoked too much pot and was frail. This was ten years ago and if we are ever all together, I will often call them The Duke/Old Man. Seems perfectly natural, but the grown-ups will look baffled.

In short: To differentiate him from other Matthew's would be my guess.

Yeah, I can see how annoying that could be. I follow Natalie Morales (the actress) on Twitter and she's constantly fielding questions meant for Natalie Morales, a reporter on The Today Show. I guess we saw a lot of that with Will Smith the redhead.

When I google myself, my Twitter is now the first hit. The 2nd, 3rd, and rest of the hits are still somebody else, but they seem to be smart dudes who wrote papers and got published and not some criminal or something, so I got that going for my name at least.

Fellow Matthew. Frequently get the "Matt or Matthew?" to which I don't really care- most folks usually just call me Lighthill anyway. Seems like when you get 8+ males around our age together you end up with at least 2 Matt's, at which point nicknames or surnames just save from having multiple people react whenever you say "Hey Matt".