When I went out into the world to seek my fortune, I was mistaken a number of times for someone else. I stopped getting surprised about it.

I decided that I had a 50th percentile face. As my ancestry is a composite of the Northern Europeans [ & Indians] who made up the population of the US circa 1850, there is some accuracy in that label.

“There are about six million Quebeckers who trace their ancestry to these settlers. Virtually all of them are thereby related to each other as distant cousins.”

Speaking of French Canadians. A guy who works for me looks – to my mind at least – just like Inspector Clouseau in one of the later Sellers’ movies. And Unlike Peter Sellers, he is French on both sides (Canadian). Also quite a bit older than Sellers at the time of Sellers’ death.

I may have mentioned before that I’ll occasionally ask him to do that “shrug thing” after he’s unconsciously just done it. I think he actually enjoys being French. In fact I am certain of it.

DNW: did you see this post?”

Pretty remarkable. There’s a difference of course between looking very much like someone and being able to really pass for them. We’re usually comparing separate photographs, unlike the cases you just presented.

In fact, a couple of students came up to me shortly after I moved there and asked me point blank if I was so-and-so.

My look alike and I were so very, very similar in appearance, fashion sense, and demeanor it was really quite disturbing sometimes. There were a few key differences, though. He was far more athletic, being one of the star cross-country runners for our school. I, on the other hand, tended to be more intellectual as I was taking the honors courses in school and he wasn’t.

I noticed, when reading the captions (on another site) that the vast majority of these `unrelated’ people are from the province of Quebec.

It means, in fact, they ARE related, if distantly.

Why? The vast majority of French-speaking Quebeckers – Quebecois – are descendants of a the original settlers to New France in the seventeenth century.

There were only about fifty-thousand of these colonists – if I remember from history class – and I might be overstating the number.

There are about six million Quebeckers who trace their ancestry to these settlers. Virtually all of them are thereby related to each other as distant cousins.

You can see this if you looked at a phone directory of any sizable Quebec city – Montreal, Quebec, Gatineau, etc. – and you’d encounter far less diversity of names than would the case for a city in a different province or state, of comparable size. (I’d guess you’d have to find an old phone book to do this, as these are not published any longer, but nevertheless…)

There might be, for example, several hundred “Trudeaus”, “Chretiens” or “Leducs” or “Laframbroise” or what have you.

It is virtually unknown for any `pure laine’ Quebecker (that is, those who trace their ancestry back to New-France settlers) to have an uncommon surname (as, for example, mine is…).