MY NAME HAS CHANGED
On 1998 March 19 I walked down to the Winona, MN courthouse and filled out the paperwork that would legally change my name from "Geoff David Busker" to "Geoff David Fortytwo". Fans of the author Douglas Adams will, of course, instantly recognize that 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. Cool huh? I'd been throwing around the idea for several months, but until Fortytwo came up I couldn't think of anything that fit all of my criteria. My requirements were as follows:- The name should be unique. In other words, no other human, living or dead, should ever have had the same last name as me. This is to prevent people from asking me: "So, are you really related to THE Einstein?"
- It should be less than 10 letters. (If I hadn't had this as a prerequisite, I might have chosen "Ecstaticfuturist" as my last name. I was strongly considering it!)
- The name must be spelled EXACTLY the same way that it sounds.
- It should start with a letter early in the alphabet.
- The name should be scientific sounding.
Here's the article about me from the Sunday, March 22, 1998 edition of the Winona Daily News:
 Call me 42WSU student wants last name to go by the numberBy Doug Mattson Winona Daily News
No hyphen, no decimal and no, he's not kidding. "I can definitely see the humor in it, but I think it's humorous and cool," he says. "It's a name that I wouldn't mind being teased about because it obviously doesn't have any standard pattern. "Most last names are just there, they have no meaning to them." In the dictionary, busker means street performer, but for the future Mr. Fortytwo it was just too … pedestrian. For the past several months, Busker has wanted something steeped in science, just like he is. He considered Einstein, Newton, even Supernova. Then he though about some of his favorite science fiction, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," by Douglas Adams, a humorous take on the meaning of life that prompted a cult following and four follow-up novels. Busker expounds on the series on his web page (fortytwo.ecstaticfuturist.com). Readers learn that 42 is "the answer to the ultimate question of life in the universe and everything," explains Busker, who's read all five books at least twice. "They had the answer, 42, but they had no idea what the question was." Then, five minutes shy of learning the answer, Earth blows up. "After long consideration, Fortytwo just seems to hit that sweet spot," Busker says. "It just feels right." The change will mean getting a new birth certificate, driver's license, credit cards, paying a $132 application fee and appearing in Winona County District Court next month. He formally applied for the change last week. It's also meant telling his parents. "I told them, 'This is not rebellion. I'm not doing it to get away from you guys or anything,' " Busker says. "I'm just doing this because I really just don't like having a name that means street performer. That just isn't appealing to me. "When I came up with Fortytwo, that was appealing enough to change, and they said no problem." David and Jean Busker of Ripon, Wis., have been accepting before. Father is a Methodist pastor, while his son espouses atheism; mother is a social worker, while her son embraces libertarianism. Wearing a T-shirt showing a silkscreened circuit board, the 22-year-old Busker fidgets in his cramped but organized apartment on the edge of campus. The walls are lined with shelves of computer texts, science fiction books, a keychain collection, sheets of computing codes, canned soup, sugared cereals and two maps of Silicon Valley. He offers mini-marshmallows and points to Mountain View, Calif., where he'll start working for Intel after graduating in late May with degrees in computer science and physics. Busker's approach to changing his name was almost scientific. He pulls out his Palm Pilot, a miniature computer screen holstered to his belt. It can be uploaded and downloaded and contains addresses, appointments, a memo pad, his school transcripts, resume, computer passwords and the "prerequisites" for his new name. "I wanted the first letter to be early in the alphabet," he says. "I didn't want it to have been used by any human, alive or dead, I preferred that it be less than 10 letters and I wanted it to be spelled exactly like it sounds." Busker can only guess that Fortytwo hasn't been used before. He said Romans named their children with numerals, referring to Octavius VIII, "so it's possible that somewhere along the line someone had 42 kids and named somebody 42, but the odds are unlikely." Busker wanted the actual digits 4-2 but, knowing computers like he does, figured it would throw off the main frames at IRS and DMV that aren't used to used to numbers where letters usually are. No matter what, though, the first name stays.
"There's just some sort of weird, emotional attachment that I sort of have
for my first name," he says. "I never got used to my last name, but my
first name, the way it's spelled, it just looks so nice. It's obviously a
totally subjective thing, and I'm sure a lot of people should be able to relate
to that."
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internet version of "The Age"
in Melbourne, Australia on April 1, 1998.
Feed him to the Babelfish
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