I was born Benjamin Brodrick Jones. Typically shortened to Ben Jones. Rather a dull name, not one I’ve ever been terribly fond of, though I was never able to come up with anything better in my youth.

I went to Emerson College in Boston. There (for whatever reason) it became commonplace for people to refer to me by both names as opposed to just my given name. “Hey, it’s Ben Jones!” “Here comes Ben Jones!” At some point, either MaryLee Vitale or Jay Leibowitz (for years I said it was the former, but Jay believes he had something to do with it, and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt) appended the word “the,” as in “Hey, it’s The Ben Jones!” In a remarkably short time, the gap between the given and surname disappeared, so my original name became a disyllabic construction preceded by a definite article; I had been dubbed “The Benjones.” It wasn’t long before my extreme dislike of the graphic design of the capital letter ‘B’ led me to rewrite the name all in lowercase.

So for years I was “the benjones.” This was handy, as I already knew of another Ben Jones living in Boston at the time. We both made mini-comics, we both played music, we actually knew a lot of the same people. It was good, therefore, back in the days when internet was fast at 28.8 and nobody had portable phones, to be able to distinguish ourselves from each other. My rather eccentric moniker meant that most folks in Boston could figure out which Ben was behind a certain project.

Over the years, after I left Boston for Charlottesville, San Francisco, and New York, the name became a twofold torment; I was still asked perpetually if I were the other one, and I had to explain ad infinitum, “No, it’s just ‘the benjones.’ All one word. All lowercase.” The definite article was the first to go. It was just too difficult to keep up with. I published some work under “benjones,” and a bit later opened Jigsaw NYC. I got a bit of internet attention for both. For a brief, shining moment I was actually the person people thought I was. This lasted about six months in 2005. Then the Other Ben Jones got big again. And I was becoming aware of Yet Another Ben Jones. Not to mention the Original Ben Jones. Comics, animation, acting, in every world I explored, there was already at least one Ben Jones there. Here, let me show you:

These are only the most accessible Ben Jones men that I am not. At least three of them are more famous than I am. You can see my dilemma. I was getting sick of the affected spelling that didn’t work as a tool for disambiguation, and I wanted to have some name that wasn’t so over-populated.

At this time, the girl I was sorta-kinda seeing had taken to calling me, simply, “Jones,” partly because she’s like that and partly because she had no patience for the outdated and rather twee “benjones” sobriquet. I was also planning a rather big move, and frankly was a little bit completely insane. I decided I needed a new pseudonym, a working title, at least something to put on any artistic endeavors. The idea was to avoid confusion. After months of discussion and contemplation, I landed upon “John Brodrick Jones,” adopting my father’s first name, having decided I wasn’t effete or Brit enough to plausibly pull off simply “Brodrick.”

And then I moved. Part of the idea behind the name John was that it was so common, it would encourage people to call me Jones. This… didn’t work. Also, nobody can spell “Brodrick” correctly. And weirdly, once I was no longer using the monoverbal “benjones”, old friends reverted to the first name instead of the last. Still others didn’t want to use the John OR the Jones OR the Ben. In my personal life in the last few years, I have answered in varying degrees to “Jones,” “Ben,” “Benjamin,” “benjones,” “Jigsaw,” “John,” “JJ,” “Jonesy,” and occasionally “James,” though to be fair, that last one is usually when being mistaken for someone else.

I am, however, happy to report that if you Google “John Brodrick Jones,” the first page of results is all me. So… I win?