He is 6’4 with brown eyes. He is also an organ donor *and* veteran. The devilishly handsome man is named Thomas Alexander Herculano de Carvalho Montalvao Machado — and the people want to know if the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles dreamt him up for its latest commercial driver’s license stock image or if he is a real person?

The safe bet is he’s a figment of someone’s romantic imagination. But the question then is whose?

The DCist/WAMU newsroom spent the better part of an hour piecing together what we could about the mysterious person behind the driver’s license. His last name is so oddly specific, one reporter opined — so is he inspired by someone real? He didn’t just capture our attention. “Find him in Navy Yard,” someone posted on a Washingtonian Problems Instagram post that has over 12,500 likes. “This man exists at the Barcelona on 14th,” said another commenter. “Yes but he’s a consultant,” said a third.

So it turns out, there is a Mr. Herculano de Carvalho Montalvao Machado who lives in D.C. His wife, Liz Fairchild, says she did a double take when she first saw the driver’s license because her husband’s last name is very distinct. He is Portuguese, she says, and it is custom for a last name to be composed of both parents’ surname.

“The more complicated both individually are, the more complicated the combined version. So there are some really beautiful, unusual names in his last name,” she tells DCist/WAMU. “I love those names. And they also create a lot of hassle for documentation, so we don’t currently share last names.”

Fairchild found some humor in the driver’s license that carried her husband’s last name going viral. She hopes people take a moment to appreciate the Portuguese tradition behind the name. “They carry a lot of history with them and you can really map a family through the last names in way you can’t as often with other naming cultures,” says Fairchild.

Given that his last name is so unique to him, Fairchild is somewhat concerned. She is mindful of her husband’s privacy, declining to say whether he and the man who shares his last name, Thomas Alexander, have anything else in common. She’s ultimately curious about the DMV’s process of mocking up a driver’s license, as is this reporter.

The D.C. DMV declined to give an interview. Instead, the agency emailed a statement: “DC DMV recently posted a graphic on our social media platforms featuring a sample CDL driver license. It was brought to our attention that the image included a family name that is shared by one or more individuals,” it read. “For privacy reasons, DC DMV has removed this graphic from all of our social media platforms.”

DCist/WAMU looked at previous DMV stock images of driver’s license for more clues, and learned the information on Mr. Herculano de Carvalho Montalvao Machado’s card is near identical to another one from several years ago. Thomas Alexander Samplecard is also 6’4 with brown eyes, as well as an organ donor and a veteran. Mr. Samplecard’s signature is also on Mr. Herculano de Carvalho Montalvao Machado’s card, suggesting these images are created with not much consideration. The photo for Thomas Alexander Samplecard looks a lot like the D.C. DMV director, Gabriel Robinson. Don’t expect to see Thomas Alexander Herculano de Carvalho Montalvao Machado among government staff. After this story published, Washingtonian reported he is a stock photography model.

It remains unclear how the DMV landed on such a unique last name — call it another unsolved D.C. mystery. A Portuguese lecturer at George Washington University, Barbara Zocal Da Silva, confirms the last name “Herculano de Carvalho Montalvao Machado” is uncommon, though not because it combines more than two last names. She tells DCist/WAMU via email that “Carvalho” and “Machado” are two of the 50 most popular last names in Portugal. But the combination — and inclusion of a name used among elders, Montalvão — makes the name special.

Martin Austermuhle, Mary Tyler March, and Jacob Fenston contributed reporting. This post has been updated to include Washingtonian reporting.