My parents gave me the same name as huge celebrity – her fans are all jealous of me, but using my passport’s a nightmare
FANS of global superstar Taylor Swift have bombarded her Scottish namesake with messages jealous of her A-list moniker, she has revealed.
We told how Taylor Swift, 19, of Newarthill, Lanarkshire is tormented by claims she’s a fake – despite being born before the US singing idol shot to fame.
But fans of the Love Story singer have got behind the self-confessed Swifty and say her story has inspired them to change their name.
She said: “Everybody’s loving it. I’ve had comments from Taylor Swift fans saying ‘I’m jealous of your name’.
“Some people are saying ‘I’m just changing my name to Taylor Swift to see if I can get some love’. I was like ‘I hope you do get some love’.
“It made everybody’s day. Seeing my family and my pals – they all loved it.”
Taylor said she’s also had thousands of messages from friends and old school pals after we revealed she was the only Taylor Swift born in Scotland.
And she’s hopeful that superstar Swift – who is due to play three concerts in Edinburgh in June – will get in touch with her.
She added: “It would just be so amazing. It would be like a dream come true.”
We revealed how the former pupil of Taylor High School, New Stevenston, Lanarkshire, struggles to get a job because employers don’t believe her name is genuine.
Taxi drivers and border officials don’t think her ID is real and she has to carry her passport everywhere.
But after we told how sharing a name with the idol can be a nightmare for Taylor she has been inundated with support.
She previously said: “I’ve had hell because of my name.”
But the teenager – who has worked in a chip shop and a warehouse since leaving school – said well-wishers have offered to give her a hand.
She added: “People have come forward with chances to get me a job, giving me peoples phone numbers, telling me where to go, just some advice they have been giving me.
“I’m looking to see if an employer, maybe, will come through and it is a bit better for me and I get more of an opportunity there.”
Her mum Mairi Rice, 44, added: “Everybody’s reaction has been fantastic.”
Mairi and dad Peter, 43, named her two years before Taylor, of West Reading, Pennsylvania, in the US, became a household name.
Speaking out about the difficulties it’s caused, Mairi said: “Normally, most of us only need to have documentation for a few things. But for Taylor, she needs it for absolutely everything. Nobody believes her.
“The last holiday we went on, we were approaching the gate when we could hear the air hostesses saying, ‘We can’t believe her name is Taylor Swift’.
“And when it comes to the passport checks, staff are sceptical. They say to her, ‘Your name is what?’ And they’ll look again.”
Taylor is also banned from using her own name on social media while her mega-popular namesake has 282million followers on Instagram.
Mairi added: “When we put her name into Facebook, they were like, ‘You’re trying to copy her name’. We sent them documents but they still said she was copying a celebrity’s name.”