If you want to understand the last 250 years
of Western civilization, like how we built empires,
who we worshiped, or what we actually valued
as a society, you really don't need to read some
massive multi -volume textbook. No, definitely
not. You just need to look at, well, the digital
graveyard of lost internet traffic, specifically
a single Wikipedia disambiguation page. You can
think about it. Have you ever typed your own
name into a search engine, hit Enter, and just
scrolled Oh, absolutely. It is such a surreal
experience, right? Right. You're looking for
yourself, obviously, but instead, you find this
bizarre alternate universe of strangers who just
happen to share your exact name. Yeah. It forces
you to realize that this incredibly intimate
identifier of your name, which feels so uniquely
yours, it's actually just a label. You might
find a dentist in Ohio, maybe a high school track
coach in Oregon, or someone who made the local
news for... Completely the wrong reasons. Exactly.
It's just a label applied to completely different
trajectories of human experience. And today we
are going entirely down that rabbit hole for
this deep dive. Which is going to be fascinating.
But we aren't using a search engine, and we aren't
looking at our own names, thankfully. We are
pulling out the microscope on one of their most
basic, utilitarian, almost invisible architectural
components of the internet. The disambiguation
page. Yes. We are looking at the human name disambiguation
page for the name William McCormick, which, according
to the source material we pulled, was last edited
on July 12, 2025. And If you're listening to
this, you might be wondering why we're dedicating
an entire deep dive to a disambiguation page.
I mean, it's essentially the digital equivalent
of a directory board in a building lobby. Just
pointing you to the right floor. Exactly. It
exists solely to reroute you when you click the
wrong link. It's not supposed to be the destination.
But the mission of our deep dive today is to
show you how this totally mundane, bulleted list
of dates and three -word biographies actually
serves as an incredible time capsule. It really
does. When you take all these completely distinct
individuals named William McCormick and you group
them chronologically and thematically, the page
stops being a directory. It becomes a 250 -year
narrative. Yeah, it shows us the mechanics of
human migration, how the definition of a valuable
profession has evolved over time. And ultimately,
the rigid formula history uses to decide who
gets remembered. Right, because on the surface,
these individuals are entirely unconnected. But
by looking at the mechanisms of who actually
qualifies for a Wikipedia page under this one
name, stretching from the 18th century all the
way into the 21st century. We get a surprisingly
accurate mirror of what Western society valued
during those different eras. Precisely. So let's
start by looking at how this name first imprinted
itself onto the historical record. If we look
at the earliest dates on this page, roughly spanning
1742 to 1941, it is entirely a story of expansion,
trade, and governance. The pioneers, basically.
Yeah, the absolute oldest entry we have is a
William McCormick born in 1742 and dying in 1815.
His entire legacy distilled down to just a few
words is Scottish born merchant in North Carolina.
Think about the immense physical reality packed
into that tiny description. I mean, to be a merchant
in the 1700s wasn't just opening a storefront
on Main Street. No, not at all. This is someone
crossing the Atlantic Ocean during the era of
sail. He's navigating imperial trade routes,
establishing a foothold in the American colonies,
and this is before the Revolutionary War even
happens. Wow, right. The level of risk. capital
and sheer logistical will required to pull that
off is staggering. And right on his heels, we
see the border crossers. There's another William
McCormick, born in 1784, died in 1840, listed
as a Canadian businessman, author, and Upper
Canada politician. So again, we're talking about
the raw construction of new territories. Exactly.
But as we push deeper into the 1800s, the momentum
shifts from frontiersmen to the true industrialists.
We hit the heart of the American Industrial Revolution.
Spot on. We get William Sanderson McCormick living
from 1815 to 1865. The page describes him as
a businessman from Virginia, operated Reaper
business in Chicago. Oh, wow. Operating a Reaper
business in Chicago in the mid -1800s. That is
the absolute epicenter of the mechanization of
agriculture. Right. He isn't just selling goods.
He is literally part of the machine that is feeding
a rapidly expanding nation. And following him,
we have William Grigsby McCormick. 1851 to 1941,
noted simply as an American businessman. And
it's not just business, right? Alongside the
flow of capital, you have the establishment of
law and order. Yeah, the page lists William E.
McCormick, 1831 to 1900. He's an American lawyer,
businessman, and politician from New York. They
love combining those three jobs. They really
do. And across the ocean in Ireland, there is
a conservative Londonderry City MP, a member
of parliament, living from 1801 to 1878. So looking
at this massive block of the 18th and 19th centuries,
it's like the name William McCormick operated
as a almost like a historical franchise franchise.
I like that. Yeah. Think about how a corporate
franchise expands into new territories across
the entire expanding Western world. Scotland,
America, Canada, Ireland. This William McCormick
franchise was entirely 100 percent focused on
the big three commerce law. and local politics.
That's a great way to look at it. Every single
one of them. The franchise was highly specialized
in building the infrastructure of nations. The
franchise analogy actually explains the era's
barrier to entry for historical memory, too.
We have to ask how someone from 1850 ends up
on a 21st century digital encyclopedia in the
first place. Right, someone had to write it down.
Exactly. Wikipedia relies on primary sources.
property deeds, legal documents, parliamentary
minutes, newspaper reference. If you were a William
McCormick in 1850 who was, say, a tenant farmer,
shoemaker, or a worker in that Chicago Reaper
factory, you did not generate that kind of paper
trail. You simply aren't on this disambiguation
page. You vanished. You were just gone, erased
from the digital record. Precisely. To be recorded
in history during the 1800s, to literally be
written down, archived, and remembered centuries
later, usually meant you had to hold capital
or you had to hold political office. You had
to own the means of production or draft the laws.
Yeah. The historical record from that era was
remarkably top heavy. So this early half of the
disambiguation page is a flawless reflection
of how institutional power dictated who mattered
enough to be remembered. But... And this is where
it gets really interesting. As the 19th century
rolls over into the 20th century, the entire
mechanism of who gets remembered completely flips.
It's a huge shift. We transition out of the industrial
expansion and the professions that earn a person
a Wikipedia page shift dramatically. Because
we enter the era where mass media begins to dictate
fame. It's no longer just about who owns the
factory. It becomes about physical prowess, entertainment,
and leisure. Wait, OK. Looking at these 20th
century names on the list right now, I'm noticing
something incredibly weird about the presentation
of the name itself. Oh, what's that? Well, the
industrialists were strictly William Sanderson
or William Grigsby. Very formal. But suddenly
the athletes arrive and it's like Did the formal
William Moniker become a liability in pop culture?
That's a fascinating observation. Because they
bring their nicknames with them. We meet Barry
McCormick, officially William Joseph McCormick,
living from 1874 to 1956, an American baseball
player. Then we have Bill McCormick, born around
1928, a Canadian football player. And Fergie.
Yes. Fergie McCormick, formerly William Fergus
McCormick, 1939 to 2018, a New Zealand rugby
player. I mean, is that just a coincidence, or
did the name literally fracture based on the
audience? It's absolutely not a coincidence.
It is a fundamental shift in the mechanics of
fame. Look at what happens in the 20th century.
You have the rise of the telegraph, daily sports
columns, radio broadcasts, eventually television.
Trading cards, all of that. Right. Sports became
a new democratic pathway to historical immortality.
You didn't need generational wealth or an inherited
political seat anymore. You just needed to be
exceptional on the field. But to survive in mass
media, you needed to be marketable. Exactly.
And Fergie fits into a newspaper headline a lot
better than William Fergie's. And really does.
It pops. It does pop. But more importantly, nicknames
create a false intimacy, which is the absolute
currency of pop culture. The public needs to
feel like they own a piece of you. Our guy Fergie.
Good old Bill. Approachability? Approachability
became just as valuable as the cold hard capital
of the 1800s. And notice the geographical spread
here, too. Baseball in America, football in Canada,
rugby in New Zealand. It's the global English
speaking word shifting its focus toward the entertainment
of the middle class. OK, but here is the contrast
that blows my mind. The page also gives us a
modern statesman to anchor this era. An American
diplomat born in 1939. Which is the exact same
year as Fergie the rugby player. Yes. But this
diplomat notably retains the formal William McCormick
title. No nickname, no Bill the Diplomat. He
kept the formal moniker while the guy his same
age playing a sport went by Fergie. That perfectly
illustrates the point though. Because they are
operating in two completely different spheres
of influence, the disambiguation page is literally
showing us the split personality of 20th century
fame. Right, the entertainer versus the official.
Yeah. The diplomat born in 1939 operates in a
world where tradition, gravitas, and formal identifiers
are paramount. He isn't trying to sell tickets
to a stadium. He's representing a nation -state
in embassies and treaty negotiations. So the
formal William is retained because institutional
power still relies on the illusion of timeless
authority. Perfectly said. It's just wild that
an automated list of names designed literally
just to fix broken internet links can perfectly
graph the sociological difference between a rugby
pitch and an embassy. It's hiding in plain sight.
It really is. So we've explored the realms of
physical power, wealth, governance, and athletics.
But there is a completely different kind of power
hidden at the bottom of this page. The power
of the mind and body. Exactly. And the literal
manipulation of the name itself. This is where
we transition to the scholars, the healers, and
the legacy branches of the name. Right. First,
we have the intellectuals and healers. We see
William McCormick, 1859 to 1930, described as
a Scottish -born scholar and educational administrator.
OK. And then another entry for William McCormick
listed simply as a Canadian physician and nutritionist.
It's a fascinating pivot from extracting wealth
and winning games to educating minds and healing
bodies. It broadens the spectrum of human achievement
under this one banner. But structurally, The
most revealing part of this Wikipedia page is
what happens when you scroll past the primary
list. Oh, you mean when you hit the see also
section? Yes, the see also section is incredible.
To me, this section acts like historical DNA.
I knew me. It's like a linguistic family tree
showing how a brand adapts to survive. Down here,
we see two names, William M. Blair, who was fully
William McCormick Blair, 1884 to 1982, an American
financier, and then his son, William McCormick
Blair Jr., 1916 to 2015, an American diplomat.
Look at the mechanical shift that just occurred
there. McCormick stops being the last name. It
physically mutates into a middle name passed
down to the Blairs. It's carrying a specific
legacy forward into an entire century of finance
and diplomacy, stretching from 1884 all the way
to 2015. It's almost like a corporate merger.
The McCormick genes grafted onto the Blair family
tree to ensure the influence survived the turn
of the century. That's a brilliant way to phrase
it. In genealogy and sociology, turning a prominent
surname into a middle name for the next generation
is a classic mechanism for preserving alliances,
wealth, and social capital. It's a power move.
It is a total power move. It signals to the world,
hey, we carry the weight and the resources of
both these lineages by including the blairs on
this disambiguation page. Wikipedia is essentially
mapping out a dynastic marriage of names. It
shows how power consolidates over time. But,
you know, the page doesn't just show us how names
survive through sheer force of will. It also
gives us a glaring, almost terrifying warning
about how easily historical memory can be erased.
You can call it the spelling trap. Yes. Right
under the blares, in that exact same see also
section, there is an explicit warning for the
user. It says, basically, if you are looking
for a William McCormack spelled with an A instead
of an I. You're in the wrong place. You're completely
in the wrong place. You need to click away to
a different disambiguation page entirely. And
if we step back and look at the category of human
name disambiguation pages as a whole system,
that single line about the spelling variation
is a profound commentary on the fragility of
our digital record keeping. How so? Like, just
because of a typo? Think about the era of handwritten
ship manifests, census ledgers, and Ellis Island
clerks. A single vowel shift, an I to an A, happened
all the time. Oh, sure. A clerk mishears your
accent, writes down an A, And suddenly, that's
your legal name. But in the physical world, your
family still knew who you were. You're still
part of the bloodline. Right. You still showed
up to Thanksgiving dinner. Exactly. But in the
digital age, our memory is incredibly rigid.
Databases run on hard -coded logic. An I versus
an A puts you on an entirely different internet
directory. You are digitally exiled from the
McCormick page and sent to the McCormick page.
Wow. Your ghost is permanently separated from
your ancestors. One typo and you practically
cease to exist in that specific lineage. I mean
you could spend your whole life building a massive
Reaper business in Chicago or playing professional
Canadian football and some archivist hits the
wrong key 50 years later and boom you're locked
out of the family wiki page. It's the ultimate
bureaucratic trap. The digital world demands
absolute precision, and human history is inherently
imprecise. It really is. But bringing it back
to the individuals we've explored today, the
scholars, the healers, the diplomats, and the
financiers, when you take them all together,
this single web page captures an incredibly vast
spectrum of the human experience. From a Scottish
-born merchant braving the Atlantic in the 1700s
to a 21st century diplomat passing away in 2015.
Which brings us to the end of our timeline. When
we started this deep dive, we promised to show
you how a mundane utilitarian web page could
act as a time capsule. And we've just traveled
250 years through a single list of dates and
three word bios. We really have. We've seen the
18th century merchants chasing new frontiers
in North Carolina, requiring massive physical
risk just to get on the historical board in the
first place. We watched the 19th century industrialist
build Chicago from the ground up and politicians
draft the laws of the era, proving that early
history was written almost exclusively by those
who held capital and power. Then we saw how the
20th century completely fractured fame into two
distinct paths. You had the approachable, nickname
loving athletes like Fergie and Barry leveraging
mass media contrasted right alongside the formal
traditional diplomats representing state power.
And finally, we saw how the name itself adapted,
mutating into a middle name for the Blair dynasty
to survive another century while narrowly avoiding
the digital graveyard of a misspelled vowel.
It really reminds you that history isn't just
locked away in dense 10 ,000 -word biographies.
It is hiding. right there in the table of contents.
It's woven into the disambiguation pages we usually
just scroll past while furiously looking for
someone else. It's a humbling perspective, honestly,
and it leaves us with something I want you, the
listener, to really think about after this deep
dive is over. We spent this entire time looking
at how the brutal efficiency of history distilled
these expansive, complex, deeply felt lives into
just three or four words, Scottish -born merchant.
New Zealand rugby player, American diplomat.
It is the ultimate inescapable elevator pitch
for your entire existence. It really is. So imagine
it is 200 years from now. Someone sits down at
whatever device exists in the future and they
look up your exact name on a disambiguation page.
What three or four words will follow your birth
and death dates? Will those few words truly capture
the essence of what you felt was your life's
mission? Or will you just be another fascinating
tiny footnote and a long list of strangers who
happen to share your name?