This time last week, South by Southwest (SXSW) wrapped up its annual festivities in my hometown of Austin. While I didn’t attend this year, I’ve been thinking about my previous experience with the conference/festival. It was about this time last year that I was coming down from the highs of attending and was following up on a few items I had flagged. The most notable was something I had seen a few days before the conference ended.
I was walking downtown from a panel session to a film screening when I stopped at a light, waiting to cross. I stood watching people with badges maneuver in and out of restaurants and hotels around me, like ants pouring out of a mound, when I looked up and saw a streetlight pole littered with posters (not unusual during SXSW). One of the posters seemed to reach out and grab hold of me, causing me to miss the crosswalk signal and simultaneously laugh out loud. I didn’t care how strange I looked laughing at a streetlight pole because what stared back at me was this:
By now, you know names are a preoccupation of mine, so it’s no surprise that this delighted and fascinated me. I had just spent nearly a week listening to brilliant speakers and watching beautifully crafted films, and yet this poster remains one of my highlights from SXSW 2023. It’s also the first and only time I wished my name was Ryan. Curiosity itched like a rash, but as much as I wanted to scratch it, I knew I couldn’t. My name is not Ryan, and that was clearly a prerequisite. So, I took this picture and decided to flag it for further research once the conference was over.
When I began my search, I learned that the Ryan Meetup was not just a one-off SXSW event, but it’s a monthly group started by a Ryan from Brooklyn. There are nearly 5,000 members across 48 countries with an Instagram following of more than 14,000. They actually temporarily changed St. Patrick’s Day in Wikipedia to St. Ryan’s Day, and just last month, they were back in Austin for the Ryan Rodeo, which happened in February (still no Bryans allowed).
Despite not being a Ryan, I love this group. They exist solely to celebrate and unite around their shared name in silly, fun ways. But they aren’t the only ones. Like many of my name-related searches, the Ryans led me down a rabbit hole into a world I didn’t know existed: the world of same-name gatherings…which is a thing.
The first non-Ryan - and most entertaining - gathering I learned about was the Josh fight. It began on April 24, 2020, when Josh Swain, who was bored during the COVID lockdown, decided to send a Facebook message to all the other Josh Swains on Facebook. He proclaimed that there could be only one Josh Swain, and he proposed a battle for the name to take place exactly one year later. He then gave random coordinates as the meeting location.
Although he was joking, he tweeted the screenshot, and it went viral. The Josh Fight became a real thing, but it was at a different location than he originally posted. It turns out the coordinates were someone’s private property, and the owners refused to host “such a ridiculous event.” It was ridiculous indeed, in the best way possible.
Nearly a thousand people attended the Josh fight in Nebraska, although only 50 were named Josh, and only two were named Josh Swain. Three “fights” occurred - a game of rock paper scissors between the two Josh Swains (the Facebook messenger/event creator won), a pool noodle battle between all the Joshs, and a pool noodle fight for anyone in attendance who wanted to participate. The Josh fight ended up raising nearly $15,000 for the Children’s Hospital & Medical Center Foundation (CH&MC), over 200 lbs of food for a nearby food bank, and inspired a California winery, Josh Cellars (of course), to donate an additional $30,000 to the CH&MC. According to the Wall Street Journal, the event was a “global news phenomenon.”
Same-name gatherings, however, were happening long before the Ryans and Joshs got in the game. Twenty years before the Ryan Meetup that sent me down this rabbit hole, in 2003, 375 Marias decided to gather in Spain, clinching the world record for most people with the same given name in one place. But not for long…
Two years later, on February 10, 2005, 1,096 people named Mohammad gathered in Dubai, smashing the Maria record. This isn’t surprising given that Mohammad (which varies in spelling from place to place) is the most common first name on earth, with an estimated 150 million people given the name.
The Mohammads held onto that record for 12 years until July 30, 2017, when 2,325 Ivans gathered in the town of Kupres in Bosnia and Herzegovina. With a goal of getting 1,000 people named Ivan together for a celebration, the event was called “The 1,000 Ivans.” But more than 3,000 registered, and ultimately, 2,325 Ivans showed up. This gave them the new world record, which still holds to this day…although not without challenge.
Two months after the Ryan Meetup in Austin, the city of Kyle, located 29 miles south of Austin, hosted “The Great Gathering of Kyles” in an attempt to battle the Ivans for their Guinness World Record. With only 1,500 Kyles, the town fell short. And that Ryan Rodeo I previously mentioned, which happened just last month, was also a failed attempt to dethrone the Ivans. I guess people want to apply the “everything’s bigger in Texas” saying to namesake get-togethers; however, the Ivans gathering is still considered the largest same-given-name gathering in the world.
But that’s just for the same given/first name. Once I started my same-name search, it didn’t take me long to find Hirokazu Tanaka, or rather the 178 Hirokazu Tanakas, who hold the world record for the largest same given and family name gathering. On October 29, 2022, 178 Hirokazu Tanakas, ages 3 to 80, gathered in Tokyo to finally earn the crown. This wasn’t their first (or second) attempt. I guess the third time is a charm.
Hirokazu Tanaka (one of them), started his efforts in 1994, almost a decade before the Marias, when he learned about a baseball prodigy also named Hirokazu Tanaka. Upon hearing the news that there was another Hirokazu Tanaka, Tanaka felt “thunderous joy” because he had always considered his name unexciting. This news reinvigorated his name for him and sent him on a quest he called the “Hirokazu Tanaka campaign,” looking for a network of Hirokazu Tanakas across Japan. It wasn’t until 2022, and his third attempt, that he was able to steal the world record from…Martha Stewart.
In 2005 (the same year as the Mohammads), Martha Stewart gathered with 163 other Martha Stewarts on her TV show to claim the record. There was an 11-year-old Martha Stewart from Florida and a 90-year-old Martha Stewart from North Carolina (whose daughter is also named Martha Stewart). I would love to find footage of this episode, but I have yet to find it.
Mixed in with the Martha Stewarts and Ivans of the world, there has also been the Gathering of Elizabeths in Elizabeth, Illinois, and there have been a couple of Nigel Nights, started by Nigel Smith to help revive the popularity of the name. There are far more same-name gatherings than I ever imagined, and reading about each one sprinkles a little joy into a sometimes dark world. These random gatherings are another reminder that we are more alike than different and that when humans come together, we can create ridiculously wonderful things.
I loved learning about each one of these gatherings, but the Ryans will always hold a special place in my heart. Throughout my search, they kept popping up. Just today I came across a National Ryan Day which, if your name is Ryan, is October 14, 2024. I have no clue if this has any relation to the Ryan Meetup group or not. It doesn’t matter. The Ryans have dominated this space for me in nearly every way (although the Martha Stewarts gave me a good chuckle).
In the midst of my research, I found an article on Facebook about same-name world records. I read through it and when I got to the bottom of the article, I noticed one lone comment.
I hope you do, Ryans. I really do.
Sadly, no "Gathering of the Garys" exists...yet!
The Martha Stewarts gave me a good giggle, too.