The problem with Harry Potter?  It’s a common name.  A really common name.  Here’s results from the 1990 U.S. census:

Harold: 44th most popular boy’s name

Harry: 70th most popular boy’s name

Potter: 376th most popular last name

Put two and two together, and that’s a lot of Harry Potters who are around nineteen years old right now — and that’s only in the United States.  If I had to guess, the name is even more popular in the U.K.

When the Harry Potter series first became popular, I remember hearing about a lot of different kids named Harry Potter.  But all the stories then were about kids who thought it was awesome that they had the same name.  What happens when you grow up?

The Daily Mail just came out with a story about an eighteen-year-old guy named Harry Potter — who even has a scar on his forehead.  It’s kind of sad and kind of hilarious:

Mr Potter has endured taunts from the public, police, phone companies and even a football referee - all because he shares a name with arguably the world’s best known wizard.

Mr Potter, who was born in 1989, had eight peaceful years of being a schoolboy with a fairly ordinary name before JK Rowling released a book entitled Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, and everything changed. [...]

‘My life has changed completely since the books were written,’ he said. ‘At first I thought it might be quite a good thing to have the same name.

‘But now it is like someone has cast a bad spell on me, the reactions I get from people range from making fun to plain aggressive.

‘Sometimes I wish JK Rowling had never used my name.

‘People seem to forget that I was Harry Potter before the character. I was nine when the books first came out.’ [...]

He said: ‘No one ever believes that I’m telling the truth about my name. I had to show my girlfriend my passport, my bank card, and my driving licence to convince her that I wasn’t lying.

‘Even getting my season ticket for Portsmouth FC was a bit of a pain - I’m a massive football fan, but I had problems at the ticket office.

‘First they didn’t believe that my name was genuine, and when I convinced them, they thought it was hilarious. It’s never-ending.

‘I play a lot of football as well in a local league, and the match reports are always full of puns - ‘Harry Potter cast a spell on the opposition and that kind of thing.’

Cheer up, man.  Either stop whining and learn to love it, or just go be your middle name, Conor.  It’s not so bad.