Have you ever "Googled" yourself?

For the technologically challenged, "to Google" something is to conduct a search on the Internet. The two most famous "Search Engines" are Yahoo and Google and you've probably used one or both of them to find a shoe repair shop or book a hotel room in Chicago. But, the question is, have you ever done a search on your own name?

My step-sister Judith Sarazua used Google to find me last year after we'd lost touch. She told me she entered Frank Hall and Sierra Madre into Google, pressed "Search" and up popped a copy of my Rotary Club's weekly bulletin. Of course, she could have looked me up in the Phone Book, but, the Web is so much more fun.

I recently created my own website, with the help of my friends Tom Brady, Dave Nardoni and my son John. I'm now "THE Frank Hall" of frankhall.com. I wanted to find out if people could find my site through Yahoo and Google, so I simply searched them both for "Frank Hall."

I found my site, but I also found other Frank Halls. Dozens of them.

The names "Frank" and "Hall" are not that uncommon. In my recent essay, "THE Frank Hall," I wrote about growing up under the shadow of other Frank Halls, including (1) my Grandfather; (2) the Quarterback when I was at USC and (3) the Insurance Man who founded the Frank B. Hall Company. They were THE Frank Hall as I grew up, but I only remember actually meeting 3 other Frank Halls in my whole life. One was the Quarterback and the other two were members of Rotary Clubs I attended over the years.

Hall is a fairly common name; it's of English and Scottish derivation and originally designated the person in the Manor House who was in charge of the Great Hall. If your name is Hall, Butler, Gardner or Cook, it probably means your ancestors were servants to the nobility. Obviously, a Hall can also be a building, as in Carnegie Hall.

"Frank" was a very common name in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, but you will seldom meet a Frank under the age of 40 except those named for a wealthy relative. In the 1930s and 40s lots of babies named "Franklin" for President Roosevelt or "Francis" for Francis Albert Sinatra and most were nicknamed Frank. In my case Frank wasn't a nickname, I was named for my Grandfather and an Uncle, Frank Peaterson.

But, common as it sounds, there aren't that many Frank Halls around. I found only one each in the phone directories in Brooklyn, Omaha and Minneapolis and not a single one in Manhattan or Los Angeles. We are, as you might say, a dying breed.

When I found all those Frank Halls in Google I felt an immediate kinship with them. They are English, Irish, Scottish, Canadian, Australian, and Americans of both European and African decent. I'm not sure whether to count the Australian, his name is hyphenated, Frank Hall-Bentick, an employee of the Aussie Government. Wherever in the world we are, we have things in common that I'd like to discuss with all the other Frank Halls.

1. I'd like to know if they have the same problems I do having a name with only two syllables. When you have a name so common, how is it so many people get it wrong. My name has appeared in print as Hale, Howell, Hull, Hill and Howe. I have been called "Fred" so many times I want to scream and when, as is my habit, I answer the phone "Frank Hall," how is it possible that I receive some idiot's follow up letter addressed to "Mr. Frankel?" Does this stuff happen to them, too?
   
   
2. Do people say, "Frankly, Frank" to them and then break up laughing as if they have just invented the funniest joke ever uttered?
   
   
3. Have they ever tried to explain to a Spanish speaking person how to spell our name? "J. O. L.?" the Spanish speaker will inquire. "No, H.A.L.L,." I will insist, knowing full well the message is not going to get through.
   
   In my High School Spanish class our instructor called me "Pancho Corredor" because he said "Hall" is not possible to say in Spanish without having your neighbor immediately begin CPR on you. Has this happened to the other Frank Halls, too?

We should have a convention, us Frank Halls, to discuss these insults and develop common retaliation strategies. We will all make reservations at the same hotel and eat at the same restaurant. We'll have name tags. It boggles the mind, doesn't it?

I'm very proud to share the name with most of the Frank Halls living and dead I located in Google. Unfortunately, most are dead.

Probably the most famous Frank Hall, outside of the Insurance man, was an Irish television performer and satirist who, I was told by an Irish waiter at Santa Anita Racetrack, was the Johnny Carson of Irish television. He died about 10 years ago, but he still has more Google references than any of the rest of us. Unfortunately, Frank Hall was just his stage name, he was born Frank Newry in Dublin.

JOCKS: I found no famous athletes aside from the Frank Hall who quarterbacked the USC Trojan Football team during the mid 1950s. There are a number of Halls in Professional sports including John Hall the Kicker for the NFL Redskins and Dante Hall the Wide Receiver/Kick Returner for the NFL Chiefs. But there are no Halls in the Halls of Fame for Baseball, Football, Basketball or Hockey. There are, of course, the Gary Halls, Senior and Junior, who excell at swimming and earned Olympic medals.

ACADEMICS: I did find several distinguished Academics. One Dr. Frank Hall, an African American, is an Assistant Professor of Geology and Geophysics at University of New Orleans specializing in Marine Biology. Another Dr. Frank Hall is a Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Georgia State University. Both have published books on their areas of interest which can be found in their respective University Libraries. Pretty impressive, Huh?

POLITICIANS: I found a great website called "The Political Graveyard" which details the exploits of politicians. The most illustrious Frank Hall was a member of the Colorado State Supreme Court 1957-64. Another Frank Hall is a current member of the Virginia House of Delegates. City Councilman Frank Hall in Teaneck, New Jersey is the narrator of a "Living History of Teaneck" in the local library. Long ago politicians include the Lt. Governor of Indiana 1909-13; a member of the New York state assembly from Niagara County 1922-28, and the Mayor of Fairmont, West Virginia in the 1860s. Some other less well known politicians include a Socialist candidate for Congress from Rockford, Ill in 1919 and the U. S. Vice Consul in Lyon, France in the same year. Perhaps the last two are the same person, a pesky American Socialist appointed by President Wilson to the position in France to get rid of him. Maybe he preached Socialism in France and, as they say, "the rest is history." Interesting to speculate, eh?

ENTERTAINERS: Besides the Irish Johnny Carson, there is a Frank Hall who is a newscaster for Channel 6 News in Philadelphia and there is a fiddler Frank Hall from Bloomington, Indiana who plays in the "Easy Street String Band." There is a guitarist from Minneapolis who published a particularly poignant web page entitled, "Does anybody remember Frank Hall?" which details his fall into alcoholism and subsequent recovery. He now is residing near Nashville composing and performing. Others include an amateur musician from Amarillo (instrument unspecified) and the leader of the "Frank Hall Band", an alternative Rock Group in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada.

Long gone entertainment luminaries include Frank Hall an early 20th century silent comedy film producer in England. There was Frank Hall a Stage Manager on Broadway from 1933 to 1950 and Frank Hall who owned a traveling Menagerie (Circus) in England in the 1890s. "Frank Hall," was also the stage name for a well known performer, manager and songwriter born in England in 1838. His real name was Herbert Stewart.

WAR HEROS: We have some genuine heroes named Frank Hall, too. One was a Union Army Chaplain awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism at Chancelorsville. His wartime letters to and from his wife Fanny have been published. My friend Dick Ingle, a civil war buff, tells me that there were 44 Frank Halls who fought each other in the Civil War. I'll bet there aren't many in the armed services today.

A real Marine hero, an African American Frank Hall, lost his life in Vietnam in 1969 and is honored on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D. C. Finally, there is another Marine Frank Hall who fought and survived Iwo Jima during WWII. He now serves as publicity Chair for "the Gooney Birds," his Reunion Group.

MEN OF THE CLOTH: Several Frank Halls were ministers. Frank A. Hall of Westport, Connecticut is a Universalist Minister whose sermons have been published in a book entitled "Frank's Sermons." Then there was B. Frank Hall a famous southern Baptist preacher of yesteryear.

ORDINARY GUYS: There are lots of plain ordinary Frank Halls, like me and my Grandfather who was a Traveling Salesman. There's the Frank Hall who has a Concrete Service in Charlotte, N.C. and another who has a Boat Yard in Westerly, Rhode Island. Frank Hall of London has a tailor shop that specializes in clothing for British equestrians and Frank Hall of Norco, California serves on the Riverside County Transportation Commission. One Frank Hall, a Maintenance Director at Makemie Woods Camp, a Presbyterian Church Retreat Facility in Virginia, was so beloved that when he died on Easter Sunday, two pages of the organization's newsletter were devoted to his obituary.

CON ARTIST: Not all Frank Halls are "Good Guys", I'm sorry to say. There is an email to an unsuspecting "Mark" on the internet from a Frank Hall who claims to be the Head of the Foreign Exchange Department for the Oceanic Credit Bank in Spain who says there is $10 Million unclaimed in his bank that is just waiting for the Mark to claim it. He will only have to send Frank a couple of thousand dollars to pay for a "confirmation study." Does anybody really fall for that stuff? I like to think the Con Man selected the name Frank Hall as a pseudonym because it sounded trustworthy.

PLACES: One day when I was driving past Santa Ana College in California I noticed a building on campus named "Russell Hall." My father's name was Russell Hall. I remember thinking at the time, "What a great way to be remembered, maybe somewhere there is a "Hall Hall" or even a "Frank Hall." Well, sure enough my Google search turned up a Frank Hall dormitory on the campus of Appalachian State University in North Carolina.

Frank Hall Elementary School is located in Aurora, Illinois, named for a pioneer 19th century Aurora educator. This Frank Hall was originally from Maine, where my ancestors hibernated for 5 or 6 generations, so, perhaps we are related.

In Idaho there is a Frank Hall Ranch near Cascade Lakes that is being subdivided and sold in small parcels. Sounds like a sound investment to me. "Frank Hall of Frank Hall Ranch" has a certain ring to it, doesn't it? But, I'm afraid I won't be able to survive the winters.

THE NEXT GENERATION: As I mentioned earlier, there aren't many Frank Halls under the age of 40. I suspect the guy who has the Alternative Rock Band in Ontario is probably in the younger generation, don't' you?. Then there is Frank Hall III, a student at SUNY in Potsdam, New York who hosted a radio show on a local FM station called "TGI FRANK." The program got cancelled and he used his website to whine about it. GROW UP, FRANK!

CALLING ALL FRANK HALLS I'm going to post this on my website and hope that some of my name-partners respond to my convention idea. It could be a lot of fun. As to you. Why don't you just go "Google yourself" I hope it is as much fun for you as it was for me.