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

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