People are unique.

This simple fact is something that we take for granted. There is no one else out there quite like you … right? Well, yes, of course. But that doesn’t mean that there might be a few people who look an awful lot like you. A person who resembles you is your doppelganger (sometimes spelled with that fun “a,” as in doppelgänger, or, alternatively, double-ganger). I must thank my editor for suggesting it (for the record, she is not my doppelganger).

But a doppelganger is more than just a look-alike. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the etymology belies a spookier meaning, as in an “apparition of a living person; a double, a wraith.” In other words, it’s a ghost that looks like you. The German word doppelgänger found its way into English in the mid-19th century; it means “double-goer,” as doppel means “double” and ganger means “goer,” from gang, “a going,” from the Middle High German word ganc.

The first appearance in English of doppelganger (as double-ganger) can be found in 1830, in Sir Walter Scott’s Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (light reading, to be sure), with the line, “He ... may probably find it to be his own fetch or wraith or double-ganger.” Scott, as many of you might know, is the legendary Scottish author of the “Waverly” novels, Ivanhoe and Rob Roy. His unique Letters is a collection of anecdotes concerning supernatural folklore, and was an early attempt to address these sorts of stories.

A slightly later example can be found in 1865 in Charles Kingsley’s Hereward the Wake, ‘Last of the English.’ Kingsley was an Anglican clergyman and prolific writer of historical fiction and children’s fantasy tales who advocated for improved sanitation and adult education, as noted in the Encyclopedia Britannica. He was a professor of history at Cambridge, chaplain to Queen Victoria, opponent of the Oxford movement and uncle of Mary Henrietta Kingsley, an adventurous Victorian travel writer. The line in question is, “Either you are Hereward, or you are his double-ganger.”

Over time, the word’s meaning went from one’s literal ghost to someone who resembled you quite closely. In this sense, one of the first uses of the word as doppelganger can be found in Neil Munro’s The Daft Days, written in 1907. Munro, whose literary alias was Hugh Foulis, was a Scottish journalist and novelist noted for his kind disposition, spending most of his career at the Glasgow Evening News. On a side note, he was regarded as a sort of spiritual heir of Sir Walter Scott. The line in question from Daft Days is, “Miss Macintosh is surely your doppelganger.”

So the next time you see someone who looks like you to an uncanny degree, you can call him or her out as your very own doppelganger. Please feel free to send me your word ideas; don’t tarry, as we only have a few more words left this quarter. Until next time, cheerio!

[Reach columnist Will Mari at features@thedaily.washington.edu.]