Call me 42

WSU student wants last name to go by the number

A Winona State University computer science student is going digital in more ways
than one.

Before starting his new software programming job in Silicon Valley this summer,
Geoff Busker hopes to legally become Geoff Fortytwo.

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."

Longterm, Busker can see sharing his new last name, forming a sum of 84.

"I'm not involved at all right now, but I'm hoping that someday, when I do
get married, that she will want to take the name Fortytwo," he says. "I'm
hoping for that."

Feed him to the Babelfish

Remember those people who spent the 1980s (and a lot of the '90s) reciting
verbatim huge slabs of Monty Python scripts? The same characters usually
specialised in regurgitating Douglas Adams' prose as well. We suspect that Geoff
Busker from Minnesota is such a person. He is applying to change his name by
deed poll to Geoff Fortytwo in honor of the punch-line to the search for the
meaning of life in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (yes, and only about 10
years too late, Geoff). It will surprise no-one that Geoff is a computer boffin
and we humbly submit that he would be best avoided at dinner parties or other
social gatherings.