I get a lot of questions about my collection of Ingas on Facebook. For those of you who aren’t on Facebook, I have over 20 Ingas in “my friends.” Why?  Really, it is quite simple, when I joined Facebook… wait a minute, does anyone not know what Facebook is? Raise your hands.

Ok, it appears that there are a few of you. Facebook is a free, Internet-based, social network that I joined after graduating from Kepler College because I thought it would be a simple (keyword: efficient) way to keep in touch with fellow Kepler-ites. Did I say efficient? Sorry, it is though. I can stay in touch with friends, cousins, stepsisters, and colleagues all in one convenient place, and for someone who has been dubbed “her terseness”, this is a big deal.

So, I had no sooner joined and sent out “friend requests” or “join Facebook” invitations to everyone involved with Kepler than I received a “friend request” from an Italian guy who had started a group of Ingas. I teased him about collecting “Nordic women” but then checked his “Facebook profile” and realized his last name was “Inga.” Then I felt like a killjoy for having teased him about that and joined his group to make amends. What is cool about it is that we are from everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, from the US, Italy, Russia, Iceland. It is not a common name, but since Ing is an Old Norse god, the name does turn up in many different languages and countries. I like that I get “status updates” from friends in languages that I can’t read.

Have you met many people who share your name? I certainly haven’t. What experiences have you had meeting people with your name or finding people on Facebook?