I’ve gotten used to seeing names that are familiar but different on my Facebook news feed.  With so many friends getting married this past summer, many new names have popped up with different middle and last names, combinations of new and old names and hyphens of all sorts.  And some are rendered totally unrecognizable, leading me to think that there’s a glitch, until I look at the profile and see the face of an old friend from high school behind a wedding veil.  But as of late, there have familiar but different names of a different kind.   And they all have one thing in common: Hussein. 

Adding Hussein as your middle name on Facebook has become a new viral way to show your support for Barack Hussein Obama.  Matt Stempeck, whose real middle name, Kelly, is a statement of his Irish Catholic roots, has recently become known as Matt Hussein Stempeck on his Facebook profile.  “I'm not the kind of person who annoys my friends with my political views, and I'm definitely not the kind of person who does so on Facebook. But as McCain's campaign gets more desperate, their rallies are getting more vile and a big part of that is this exaggerated anger towards all things foreign,” he said.  Stempeck explained that Facebook is the contemporary version of bumper stickers or t-shirts and as a city dweller living in Washington D.C. without a car, he found his Facebook profile to be the best location for a political statement. 

But the viral movement is more than just expressing support of a candidate.  That can be done in a multitude of ways on social networking sites and blogs, whereas the addition of Hussein to one’s name serves a slightly different purpose.   “There's a long history of groups reclaiming the words used against them. In doing so they've diffused what is meant to be a charged attack against them,” said Stempeck.  

Kristine Dugan, who is currently going by Kristine Hussein Dugan on her Facebook profile expains, “Many in this country affiliate Hussein with terrorism, but if John McCain’s middle name was Timothy instead of Sidney would people affiliate him with terrorism since Timothy McVeigh committed a catastrophic act of domestic terrorism? Should every one with the name Timothy or the last name of McVeigh feel ashamed? How about Germans bearing the name Adolf? Should they lose their credentials and be considered dangerous?  I just find the entire topic of Obama's middle name absurd and another way to marginalize him and create 'otherness'. ”

Lora Shimp, another adopter of the name, agrees.  “People who judge him on his name really show their limited world perspective. It is not your name that dictates your religion, your values, nor who you are,” she said.  Dugan agrees saying, “My middle name is 'Lea', so Hussein is a stretch! But what's in a name really? My first name means ‘Christian’ and I am not one.”  

Both Stempeck and Dugan say they have received positive feedback about the name change and both have had friends follow their lead.  A quick search of Facebook produced dozens of groups with thousands of members who have added Hussein to their name in “a sign of solidarity - and hopefully some humor - for Obama” as Shimp puts it. 

“The cumulative effect of so many people adding 'Hussein' to their profile represents one of the great things about Facebook.  It took me about 12 seconds to add 'Hussein' to my name, but the collective impact of several of my friends doing so and having it ripple through our social and professional networks is much more profound. It's a very subconscious thing, but now an exponential number of people are being exposed to seeing people they know and trust with this middle name. It takes some of the fear out of it and makes it less foreign,” said Stempeck.