Obamania

What's in a name?

Quite a bit, including a pass on a speeding ticket, skipping the line at night clubs and numerous questions from strangers, if your last name just happens to be Obama.

The Washington Post has an article out today on the impact of the election on other folks with the last name of Obama. A few excerpts...

After stopping the 28-year-old for a little lead-footing near the Verizon Center, a District police officer looked at his driver's license and put the citation book away. "He said, 'Well, I'm going to let you go because you have the Obama name' " recalled Nicanor Obama. (DC's finest huh?)

Nicanor, like most of the Obamas in this area, is a native of Equatorial Guinea. The name is common there -- much more so than in Kenya, in fact, where the president-elect's father was from -- and Guineans wonder whether they can make their own claim to a branch of the president-elect's family tree. There are also a few Obamas of Japanese decent.

If it's good to be an Obama, it's also exceedingly rare. According to databases, there might be fewer than 20 Obama families in the United States, compared with more than 11,000 Clintons and 60,000 Bushes.