Some time ago, I was riding a train through central England and a man boarded at one of the stops. As he looked for a seat, he saw my face and beamed at me with great joy. "Hi, Will!" he said brightly, in a wonderful British accent.

Unfortunately, I'm not Will. When he sat next to me and I opened my mouth to protest his mistaken notion of who I was, my flat American English paved the way for his embarrassment. Obviously, I was not the person he expected. Nevertheless, we got along "brilliantly," as the British put it, and I am no longer either Will or a stranger to the man.

Mistaken identity is not all that uncommon, especially when there are only so many variations to our same facial features. After both Albert Schweitzer and Albert Einstein gained worldwide fame, and had their pictures…