Names

I was thinking about names today. See, when I was in school there were two boys who had the exact same name. I think that it was even down to the middle name. We had to call them Tall Brian and Short Brian. In high school, Tall Brian was expelled. Short Brian slowly became Brian. There was another Rachael in my class, only she spelt it Rachel. Both of our last names started with "S," we sat next to eachother in every class we had together (alphabetical), and we both spent a bulk of our class time reading and writing in our journals instead of paying attention.

However, you never run into same names in books. I recognize that this would make books really confusing, having a bunch of Elizabeths in the same class, but it would also make them realistic. I recently read a book where the main character in a first person p.o.v. refered to every character by first and last names. I understand this. I think this is realiztic. BUt wouldn't be even more realistic if there was a Kristen Brown and Kristen Smith?