Having the same name as a celebrity can be both comical and annoying, involving constant jokes and offerings of proof that yes, that is actually your real name. But having the same name as a celebrity and also being related to her? That’s the life of Taylor Swift. No, the other Taylor Swift.
The 21-year-old Taylor from Rockville, Maryland, hasn’t sold millions of albums or gone on world tours – she doesn’t even really sing, unless you count karaoke. She currently attends Oberlin College where she’s taking classes in politics and Hispanic studies, and she spends her spare times giving swim lessons to kids.
But this Taylor doesn’t just share a name with one of the most famous pop stars in the world – she’s also the 26-year-old’s second cousin, and this she week opened up to Seventeen.com about what it’s like to be related to a superstar with the same name.
Though both Taylors go by the same name and have blonde hair and blue eyes, the similarities stop there. College student Taylor doesn’t sing, she doesn’t like country, and she didn’t even listen to her famous cousin’s music until recently.
‘I honestly wasn’t a big Taylor Swift fan before. I’m not really into country, but I loved 1989,’ she said.
She has capitalized on her name and lookalike status a few times on Halloween, though, dressing up as the Blank Space crooner – that’s her favorite song by the star – and even went in one of her cheerleading costumes from the Shake it Off video last year.
But even though she downloaded 1989 – along with five million other people – and saw the tour this summer, the surprising truth is that she’s never actually met Taylor Swift, the singer, despite their family connection.
Taylor and Taylor’s dads are first cousins, but they’re not exactly close. Taylor-the-student’s dad didn’t even know about the other Taylor, five years older, when he and her mom settled on her name.
The twin-named cousins didn’t grow up playing with together, either. While the younger Taylor was in Maryland, the soon-to-be-famous Taylor lived in Pennsylvania as a kid before moving to Nashville, Tennessee when she was 14.
In fact, neither of the cousins even knew the other one existed for years. The younger one first became aware of the older one in third grade, when she googled her named and came across TaylorSwift.com. At the time, the singer’s career had yet to take off.
It took another two years before the younger Taylor’s dad told her that the up-and-coming singer was in fact her cousin.
That’s when the younger Taylor decided to email the singer through her website and introduce herself. She only received an automatic response, though, and soon stopped using the email address – so she didn’t realize that, a month later, Taylor actually emailed her back.
‘I love that we have the same name and are related too!’ the soon-to-be-star had written before asking about her cousin’s life. ‘I’m sorry it took so long to answer. Tell your family the Swifts from Tennessee say hi!’
Even though they still haven’t met, the Oberlin student did enjoy one perk of her connection – over the summer, she met the star’s parents, who got her backstage at the 1989 tour.
Taylor bought the tickets herself, but her dad called up the star’s dad, Scott, who scored her VIP access. Sadly, the headliner was sick that night and slept right up until her performance – so she didn’t have time to meet her cousin.
Taylor didn’t mind, though, and enjoyed getting to know her parents.
‘Her mom is so friendly!’ she said. ‘She loves all the fans, and after shows, she finds people in the crowds to go meet Taylor. She’s always taking photos with fans and reaching out to kids. Her dad is much more business-oriented. He’s very smart with that. I haven’t met her brother, but I know that he’s doing acting now and is pretty successful.’
Taylor said that she has no desire to change her famous name, but that doesn’t mean telling people she’s Taylor Swift doesn’t come with some hassle.
She said there have been days when she’s gotten a hundred messages and requests on social media, and Facbeook once deactivated her account because they thought she was a fake. She had to send the company her ID as proof – and she now includes her middle name, Rae, on her page too to make it clearer.
She also has to deal with repetitive jokes, which get old really fast. She’s used to hearing comments about her names at airport security, or whenever she pays with her credit card.
She’s on her college lacrosse and field hockey teams, and when the announcers read her name over the sound system, she has to face jeer and jokes from the other team.
Once, when she deposited a check from her summer lifeguarding job at the bank, a teller made a rude comment that he’d expect her to be depositing more ‘with a name like yours’.
But the worst thing, she said, ‘is when people are like, “Oh, she’s not the real one.”
‘It’s like, “OK, I’m still a real person!”‘ she added.
