A Lesson from One of 215 Brian Doyles

The Quest for Originality

Photo Credit: iStock (Ron Bailey)

The first thing one learns when launching a Substack, if you’re not one of the originals and that means you’re pretty much late to the party, is that all the good Substack names have already been taken. Everything descriptive of your intended content, everything whimsical, literally everything either exists as an ongoing newsletter or is “coming soon.”

Not just on Substack. There are great names all over the internet. The titles for The New Yorker’s “Rabbit Holes” have to be in the upper echelon. Every one of these deserves the attention it gets from me. Then again, if you’re a certain type of person (me, and anyone else interested in living room furniture groupings), you’re just as likely to hit the link, “These 10 Living Room Photos Are Trending This Week,” every single time that same title hits your inbox.

What made the title of every Friends episode cheeky was its nod to the trope it was flagging. Somewhat famously, each begins with the same few words. “The One with…,” or, less often, “The One Where …” These plain as white T-shirt titles are their brand. Whether they were on the mark wasn’t the point. “The One with Ross’s New Girlfriend” might well have been called “The One Where Phoebe Cuts Monica’s Hair.” Side note. The episode’s most memorable scene is also a primer in this key fact: keeping names straight is just as important as choosing a name—often more so.

What makes for a standout name anyway? It’s like unearthing the elements that make for charm and originality, which brings me around to a brief essay that brushes against the topic of names with just the right amount of both.

The essay, “Being Brians” by Brian Doyle begins by telling us, “There are 215 Brian Doyles in the United States…” All having the same name, Brian Doyle (the writer of the article) set out to find out the particulars about his fellow Brians. He learned the different streets they lived on as well as more personal information:

…one of us is 18 and “likes to party”; one of us played second base very well indeed for the New York Yankees in the 1978 World Series; several of us have had problems with alcohol and drugs; one of us is nearly finished with his doctorate in theology; one of us is a 9-year-old girl…

There’s a wisp of a knowing wink as the writer Brian Doyle sets out his lists. But not enough that he can’t get out of its way.

After exchanging emails with the Brian Doyle from Leicester, Mass, he learns the Massachusetts Brian Doyle had been wounded three times in Vietnam but that it was in a car accident soon after his return home where he became paralyzed from the chest down. That Brian Doyle’s wife is legally blind from a degenerative eye disease and he entreats the writer Brian Doyle, “So let’s go for the gusto and enjoy while we can.”

The writer Brian Doyle takes that in.

I think about him in his wheelchair and his wife who cannot see very well and the days and months he must have spent on his back after his car crash thinking about the irony of surviving warfare only to be savagely injured on a highway, and by then it is time to put my sons and daughter to bed, which I do with the sharp flavor of gratitude in my mouth.

I don’t know how many Brian Doyle’s there are currently. I know that sadly, one of them, the writer of “Being Brians,” is no longer on that list.

I always come away from “Being Brians,” feeling the palpable good humor and curiosity that went into the writer’s seeking out the many men, and one girl, who share a common name. Very often, I’m sad that I’m not one of them. Who wouldn’t want to fold themselves into the community of Brian Doyles? Simply by sharing a first and last name combo, they have a connection, and yet that one name gives way to all the very different Brian Doyles. I want in on that club.

“One of us writes on Substack.”

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Episode Notes

This Week’s Recommended Watching

The smooth restraint of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Wall in Washington, DC (Dedicated Veteran’s Day 1982)

This Week’s Recommended Reading

President Obama fancied selling plain white T-shirts (only in size medium) from a shack in Hawaii after he left the Oval Office, when he’d “no longer have to make another job-related decision.”

This Week’s Music

"Hey There Delilah" by Plain White T's (on Amazon Music and Spotify)

Just One More Thing

Have you ever met someone with your name?