Why so many of us? Which of us owns this website?
A name exists to refer to a person — the referential theory of names, which runs back to John Stuart Mill: a proper name denotes an individual and connotes nothing else about them. It follows that the best name is one that refers to a single person, sidestepping the authority-control problem of many people sharing one label. "Michael Currie" falls well short of that, as this wall shows.
We can close the gap by adding more detail: "Michael Bruce Currie, born 1982" is probably unique — about 78% likely, given an estimated 500–1,000 Michael Curries, a few percent named Bruce, and one birth year in roughly eighty. If we specify the full date and city of birth, the chance of naming just one human rises to about 99.9%. Finally, using a unique identifier will be sure to refer to exactly one human:
FamilySearch PersonID P4RL-BWV
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0879-2880
