Growing up, I think everyone in my family thought that our last name was pretty unique. At least, we knew it wasn't as popular as other names we saw.

In those days, when everyone wasn't on the internet all the time, you'd come across people's names in a bunch of different places - sports rosters, news broadcasts, magazines, books, and more specifically, phone books.

And we never saw another Sucich - especially in the phone book, where so many other last names showed multiple entries.

But I'm discovering that Sucich isn't as rare as I once thought.

What I've found recently is that there are a few other people named John Sucich, besides my dad of course, that every so often I catch wind of.

There's a pilot named John Sucich in Michigan. There's a politically active Hawaiian named John Sucich - I think I received e-mails intended for him once.

There's also a bunch of obituaries for people named John Sucich that I've come across when I Google myself every once in a while.

I did that this weekend, just to see what came up. It brought up this nice article about my brother, which was a pleasant surprise. Sometimes there are links to the results of road races I ran more than a decade ago.

But I was reminded this weekend when I did it that I wanted to engage in a social experiment - because another place where I find a lot of 'Sucich' is Twitter.

And I've often thought about those other Suciches - do they wonder who we New York ones are as much as I wonder about them?

So I'm following them all - well, 7 of them, since I'm careful not to hit any that look like spam accounts - and we'll see what happens.

Maybe they're inactive and I won't follow them for long. Maybe they'll be great people that I become friends with. Maybe they're boring and I won't pay any attention after a day or two.

But we'll never know unless we give it a shot.

Update: Within 10 minutes of following the Suciches on Saturday, I heard from a Chelsea Sucich, who is in Tampa, and from Chicago. I had come across an article about yet another John Sucich who moved from Europe to Chicago in 1919 or so…I wonder if there's a connection there.