On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 12:06:36PM -0500, Freelance Traveller wrote:
> The patronymic system described as in use in Iceland in my earlier
> missive has the potential for "collisions" of names, much like the
> Jewish system, and such collisions are generally resolved the same way -

Most systems have potentials for collisions... I don't know of any
people with all the same names (in Finland you can have 1-3 first names,
I'm Mikko Ville Iisakki Parviainen), but as we usually use only one first
name and the surname, collisions are easily possible.

When I worked at the Helsinki University of Technology, there was one
other Mikko Parviainen working there. Once I got the flight tickets to a
conference in internal mail, with the note "are you the correct one?" on
them. I know of at least a third Mikko Parviainen in the genreal area,
and a Google search turns up more of us.

Also, there are only a bit over five million people in Finland. I would
imagine name collisions are more common in larger cultural areas and
if you only have one first name.

--
Mikko Parviainen
http://pare.iki.fi/blog/