If someone were to offer you a couple hundred bucks to change your name (to whatever non-obscene name they chose), would you sell it? I’m talking passport, driver’s license, all legal documents, how friends reference you, everything. Probably not … but what if the offer was for $40,000 or more?

Scott MacDonald (the guy in the picture below) is betting that there’s a huge demand for his name, so he is auctioning his name off to the highest bidder (and, for good measure, giving 10% of the proceeds to charity):

The current highest bid is just shy of $40,000, with another month to go (the auction ends on Groundhog Day). Here’s a few of the bids so far:

• $36,789.10 - “Finest Freshest Fastest” (highest as of tonight)
• $35,001 - “Schenectady New York” (not sure this is the best marketing ploy to turn around poor old Schenectady)
• $24,123 - “Oprah Winfrey” (oddly, the bidder deals with plastic surgery and is a snowboard afficianado)
• $4,100 - “Mr. MyFatRobot.com” (his parents would be so proud)
• $2,222 - “Ian Vestinaustralia” (get it? Maybe our neighbor down under is having financial difficulties too)
• $5 - “Mr. Clean” (first offer, outbid the next day by “Vanilla Ice”)

So … would you sell? I would, but only if my name could be “SmarterThan TheAverage Bear”. That would make for fun business meetings and court cases, and it easily fits on most legal forms too

Trackback URI | Comments RSS