Hundreds of people showed up in Lincoln, Nebraska, to determine who was the rightful owner of the name “Josh.”
Of course, the question was decided with a battle of pool-noddle-wielding combatants.
The debate began a year ago when Josh Swain, a 22-year-old college student from Tucson, Arizona, “messaged others who shared his name on social media and challenged them to a duel,” The Associated Press reported.
“We fight, whoever wins gets to keep the name, everyone else has to change their name, you have a year to prepare, good luck,” Swain said to another man named Josh Swain.
“For a long time, I’ve gone on Twitter and Instagram and I’ve tried to get the handle of just ‘Josh Swain’ and it’s always been taken… One day, I was like all right, we can fix this,” Swain said, according to KLKN-TV.
The whole thing came to a head on Saturday.
“The festivities started with a ‘grueling and righteous battle of Rock, Paper, Scissors’ between the Josh Swain from Arizona and another Josh Swain from Omaha. KLKN-TV reports that the Arizona student won that competition, allowing him to claim the title of the true Josh Swain,” the AP reported.
Then a full battle broke out for anyone with the first name of Josh. The victor of that competition was a 5-year-old – dubbed Little Josh – who was coronated with a Burger King crown.
BREAKING: Five-year-old #LittleJosh has won the #JoshFight! pic.twitter.com/VTztUHDMeW
— Yousef Nasser (@YousefKLKN) April 24, 2021
Josh Swain – the real one – said, “I did not expect people to be as adamant about this as they are right now. I didn’t expect the whole internet to take it and start contacting every ‘Josh’ they knew.”
Before the gathering, Swain put a post on Instagram. “My name is Josh Swain (actually),” he wrote. “Almost one year ago, under a spell of pandemic boredom, I made a groupchat of all the people on Facebook that I could find with the same first and last name as mine, and challenged them to fight for the right to keep this common name. This was a complete joke, and I have posted jokes to my twitter before, but when I posted the screenshots to my twitter here, the internet ran with it, and ran with enough endurance for you all to remember a YEAR later. That doesn’t happen very often, so I’m afraid I have to oblige the internet and trek all the way across the contiguous United States to defend my name.”
Swain then laid out the details of the gathering.
“I also just set up a fund for the Children’s Hospital and Medical Center… which provides medical care to children across Nebraska,” said Swain. “The title is ‘Legal Fees for Josh’s to Change their Names’ but it actually just goes to the children’s hospital.”
“People donated about 200 to 300 pounds of food for the Food Bank of Lincoln and raised more than $8,000 for the Children’s Hospital and Medical Center Foundation in Omaha. “Little Josh” suffered from seizures when he was about 2 years old and received treatment at Children’s Hospital, so his victory seemed meant to be, his dad said,” The Lincoln Journal Star reported.