Today the NY Times ran an amusing story titled, “Calling Steven Cohen. No, Not That One.” The article states that there are too many famous Steve Cohens involved in politics and academia, and as a result they frequently get confused in the media. I was surprised to find that I was briefly mentioned in the article, along with other Steve Cohens: a wrestler, a soccer player, and (most famous of all) a hedge fund trader.

Hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen (shown above, with me and his charming wife Alex) has been to my show in NYC, and has also invited me to perform privately in Connecticut. We first met at an event years ago at the Pierre Hotel in New York, and have stayed in touch ever since. Steve then introduced me to Robin Hood Foundation, and arranged to have me entertain the Board of Directors at their annual luncheon. A truly amazing group.

Funny enough, I get a fair amount of “Steve Cohens” who come visit me at my Waldorf show. After the show I always do a meet-and-greet, and these fellows come up to me with a challenging tone in their voice, saying “Bet you can’t guess my name!” The moment they say that, I KNOW it must be “Steve Cohen.”

When I first began my show in 2000, my marketing budget was slim to none. I tried to think of clever ways to get people in the door without spending too much money. One of the things I did was send out advertising postcards to every “Steve Cohen” in the Manhattan telephone book! (There were several pages worth.) I figured that people are vain, and would wonder what my show was about. Sure enough, when they received the postcards, their curiosity got the best of them, and a lot of them actually showed up at once.

For completeness’ sake, here is the text of the NY Times article, by Joseph Berger:

Calling Steven Cohen. No, Not That One.

January 4, 2011, 2:38 pm

Steven M. Cohen, left, with Andrew M. Cuomo, then the attorney general, at a news conference last April. Mr. Cohen has been named secretary to Mr. Cuomo. But perhaps he is not the only Steven Cohen in the picture.

Steven Cohen is the new secretary to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, among his most powerful aides. So please don’t confuse him with Steve Cohen, the Memphis congressman, or Steven A. Cohen the billionaire hedge fund manager.

Or the two Steve Cohens who are experts on Israel often quoted in The New York Times and other newspapers — Steven M. Cohen at Hebrew Union College in New York and Stephen P. Cohen at the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development, also in New York.

And though they have the same middle initial, the latter should not be mistaken for the Stephen P. Cohen who is an expert on South Asian politics at the Brookings Institution. And he should not be confused with Columbia University’s Steven A. Cohen, who is director of its environmentally focused Earth Institute. Or New York University’s Stephen F. Cohen, who is a professor of Russian studies and history.

None of the above is the Steve Cohn who was a Democratic district leader in Brooklyn for many years, until he decided not to seek re-election in 2010. (His son sought his seat and lost.)

The world is filled with accomplished Steven Cohens or so it might seem when entering the realms of academia or public policy, which seem to be populated by a profusion of quotable Steven Cohens. A search of Wikipedia has articles on no less than 12 Steven or Stephen Cohens, including a wrestler, a magician and a soccer player, and not including Stephen Cohn, a composer of concert and film music.

To be one of these Steve Cohens, however, can mean wrestling with the muddles growing out of their identical or nearly identical names.

“I believe I’m the third one my wife went out with,” said the environmental Steven Cohen, who also blogs for The Huffington Post.

He also had the misfortune of ending up in the same building on Morningside Heights where the Russian studies Stephen Cohen had once lived, so he spent a good deal of time forwarding mail.

“And Google has only made it worse,” he said. “I get e-mails from people asking me about Jewish social policy or Russian politics and I refer them to the other Steve Cohens.”

This Mr. Cohen met Mr. Cuomo’s Steven M. Cohen — a former federal prosecutor — during the campaign for governor because he was asked to write position papers on energy and the environment.

“He was a very nice guy,” he said of the governor’s Steve Cohen. “There was, of course, confusion.”

Stephen Cohen, the Russian expert, recalls receiving an enveloping bear hug from Bill Clinton at a fund-raiser about six years ago because the former president wanted to consult about Middle Eastern policy and thought he was buttonholing that Stephen Cohen.

More than coincidence may explain this plethora of namesakes, and there are several Steven Cohens with the credentials to provide an analysis.

Steven M. Cohen, the professor of Jewish social policy at Hebrew Union College in Greenwich Village, pointed out that Cohen is the most common Jewish name. And Steven or Stephen was a popular name for baby boomers, adds the environmental Steven Cohen, particularly among Jewish parents wanting to brand their children with an Americanized moniker.

Those boomer Steven Cohens have now reached their 50s and 60s, an age where their reputations have been burnished.

“So it is no surprise that there are so many Steven Cohens at the peak of their careers,” said the Jewish social policy Steven Cohen.

That Steven Cohen also thinks that it should not be surprising that many professors have the name Cohen because a high proportion of Jews work in academia. The abundance of namesakes explains why so many Steven Cohens are insistent about using their middle initials.

Some might speculate that the prominence of Steven Cohens has to do with the fact that almost all Cohens are descendants of the esteemed priests — the Cohanim — that tended the Jewish temple. However, the environmental Mr. Cohen said that he is not such a descendant. His last name was given to his grandfather by an Ellis Island immigration official looking to simplify a now-obscure Eastern European name.

Not all Steven Cohens have distinguished themselves in a way that promotes pride among their doppelgängers.

Indeed, Wikipedia shows that a Stephen M. Cohen was accused by a federal court in California of fraudulently acquiring control of the domain name sex.com in 1995 — not long after he spent time in prison for bankruptcy fraud.

And other names are common enough to have generated numerous Wikipedia entries — Mark Levine, say, or Steve Ross, or John Williams, a name that includes an award-winning composer and two authors, one black and one white, who were often confused with each other.

Charles M. Newman, a professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University and a probability expert, said, “These kinds of coincidences are not as unusual as they sometimes sound.” If Steven Cohen is a common name, then a certain percentage of them would be well known, depending on what threshold one uses for fame.

His own name, he pointed out, is relatively common. Four years ago, he found himself somewhat unnerved by opening The Times and seeing an obituary of a namesake, the editor of a literary magazine. He was relieved when he read that the literary Charles Newman had been married five times. The mathematical Charles Newman has only been married once.

Do you have a name that seems to have you coming and going? And, if so, does it bring you pride — or is it unsettling?