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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47677
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

John specifically has a wide array of cross-cultural appeal, originating from Hebrew and having a variant in just about every European and Near Easter language family. It's super easy to solve your problem:

**They aren't spelled the same way**

John in English has a varient spelling of Jon, most famously used by the owner of Garfield in the comic and various spin off media. One of your John's could be "Jon" and thus Jon and John are meeting. The name Jon is pronounced the same way in English as the name John.

**You don't know Jack**

Today, it's now it's own name, but back in the day, a common pet name for a John was "Jack". So your character of John Smith can prefer to be addressed as John, but your character of John Jones would prefer to go by "Jack" and would be fully written as John "Jack" Jones.

**A John by any other Name**

Especially true in American Culture, but it's not unheard of for foreign immigrants to go by Anglicized versions of their names, especially when trying to blend in. This is especially common if their name is indicative of a society that in the U.S. or other local might not be in vogue at the moment. For example, a Johan or Jean (German and French respectively) would perhaps go by John. In the case of the former, this happened often during both world wars. In the later's case, Jean is seen as feminine name in English, but is Masculine in French. In fact the French proncunciation sounds like John (JI-on) while the English pronunciation sounds like a type of pants (using a long e sound). The hero of Star Trek: TNG, Jean-Luc (pronounced John-Luke) was once mispronounced as John-luck by a character feigning ignorance of the correct pronunciation, as a person who never heard the name might do. Another character with a different name, Piort Rasputin, aka X-men's Colossus, would frequently go by Peter, an anglicized version of his name, especially during the years he was introduced, when his native Russia was in a cold war with the X-men's home nation of the United States and Colossus was firmly a hero to the Americans. The end of the cold war saw him return to using the name Piotr more frequently. These behaviors are common among immigrants, or second generation immigrants with more traditional names (your parents came to the U.S. gave you a goofy cultural name, and you want to identify with your All American friends). This is not as in vogue today, but there are still names that come up. For example the Spanish name Giancarlo is fairly common, and frequently shortened to Gian which is pronounce close to John as well (the full name is often pronounced John-Carlo, though I've also heard a Jean-Carlo pronunciation. I attribute the difference to accents from their native region.).

So it's entirely possible for two characters to go by "John" but spell it wildly different.

**Here's Johnny**

And finally, you can always refer to one as Johnny (usually the more funny of the two) and the other as John. Just make sure you always call John Smith "Johnny" and never call John Jones by that name.

Original score: 9