Breaking news: three guys at a liberal arts school have the same name. 

Of course, this hardly comes as a surprise to anyone at Kenyon, which boasts an abundance of Zoeys, Olivias and, of course, this author’s own name. Parents between 2004 and 2007 were operating on a similar wavelength with respect to the names of students admitted in recent years. One popular example is the case of the Silases, a trio of friends with the same name who have risen to Kenyon stardom since they came to campus last year. Given the school’s small size and their relatively uncommon name, it is all the more surprising to see three members of the Class of 2028 with the first name Silas — let alone three friends. 

Silas Camp ’28, Silas Richland ’28 and Silas Rosenfeld ’28, playfully dubbed the “Silai” by their friends and peers, became quick campus celebrities early in their first year. “We met because of our name,” Richland told the Collegian. “I was with a couple of other friends, and someone … pulls [Rosenfeld] over and was like, ‘You have to meet the other Silas.’” Later on, they became a trio, inviting an assortment of playful remarks. “We’d walk in threes around everywhere,” Richland recalled. “We got a lot of Silas jokes.”

Naturally, being in a friend group where many members share the same name is not without its challenges. “Especially at the beginning of the year, [when someone said, ‘Silas,’] all three of us would turn our heads,” Camp said. Luckily, there were some distinguishing factors: “People would call me Greg Heffley last year when referring to me,” Camp told the Collegian. “I was bald at the beginning of freshman year, so people called me Bald Silas,” Rosenfeld added. Other creative nicknames included Si-fi (Richland), Wilas (Rosenfeld) and Scamp (Camp). 

“It’s more of a game of sitting in a room and trying to figure out, when someone says ‘Silas,’ who they’re talking about. After a while, I just started intuiting it,” Rosenfeld said. He then asked Camp and Richland to close their eyes before saying “Silas,” and encouraged them to identify which Silas he was referring to.  

As of this year, they are the only students currently enrolled with the name. Camp, Richland and Rosenfeld did not encounter many other people named Silas before coming to Kenyon either. “I was born in New York a few months before [Camp] was,” Rosenfeld told the Collegian. “When I was a year old, my mom checked the registry in New York to see if anyone else was named Silas, and one Silas was [living] in Brooklyn in 2006.” At the time, Camp was living in Brooklyn. “My mom likes to say that she’s known about [Camp] my entire life.” 

This semester, the Silas jokes have largely subsided. “This year has definitely been … branching away from the ‘Silai,’” Richland acknowledged. As the trio became more ingrained in the ebbs and flows of Kenyon life, their shared name became less of a focal point. “Over time, you stop being a conglomerate, and you start to live in different ways,” Camp offered. Rosenfeld agreed, “The more invested you become in an individual, the less their name matters.”