He is dashingly handsome, dazzlingly sophisticated and equally handy with firearms and female admirers. He prefers martinis and loves the latest gadgets.

He famously introduces himself by last name first. “Bond. James Bond.” And he has kept readers and moviegoers alike on the edge of their seats for nearly 75 years now.

But did you know there really was an actual James Bond? He never faced down an international villain, made women swoon or escaped pursuing bad guys with death-defying hi-tech getaways.

Nor did he have even the slightest passing resemblance to Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lizenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig.

So, just who was the real James Bond? And how did he wind up becoming the namesake of the most famous secret agent in the world?

It was because the character’s creator, Ian Fleming, was in a bind.

The author had met some fascinating figures while serving in British naval intelligence during World War II. They were boldly cunning and undertook hush-hush operations at incredible personal risk, including Fleming’s own brother Peter, who was involved in behind-the-lines missions in Norway and Greece.

So, Fleming rolled all of them into the character we now know as 007 when writing his 1953 novel, “Casino Royale.” But he ran into a Mount Everest-sized mental block: What name to give the super spy?

Each one he came up with fell flat. None were quite right. As Fleming later remembered in a 1962 interview with The New Yorker, “I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened.”  

James Bond, dull? He may be many things, but dull isn’t one of them.

When Fleming couldn’t craft a name to his liking, he looked about for an actual one to borrow. And he found it in the most unlikely of places.

Fleming was living in Jamaica and was an avid birdwatcher. Thumbing through books on the topic one day, he came across a field guide bearing the almost painfully lackluster title, “Birds of the West Indies,” written by—wait for it—James Bond.

“I thought, by God, it was the dullest name I ever heard,” Fleming said. “It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon, and yet very masculine name was just what I needed.”

And so the hero of countless adventures now had a name.

But who was the real James Bond?

If the movie star adventurer ever had an exact opposite, it was his namesake. The actual James Bond was born into a prosperous Philadelphia family in 1900 and fell in love with natural history as a child. Educated at Cambridge, he returned home and spent three miserable years working at a bank before turning to his life’s passion.

Bond became a highly respected ornithologist, led dozens of bird-watching expeditions to the West Indies, and was an acknowledged expert on Caribbean birds.

While the other James Bond (the Double-0-7 one) was a big hit in Europe, it took several years before the books caught on in the U.S. In fact, real James Bond didn’t learn about the fictional version until the early 1960s.

In 1964, Bond and his wife unexpectedly visited Ian Fleming in Jamaica. What could have been an awkward situation was immediately defused when the writer learned Bond thought it was a wonderful joke. Fleming later wrote to Bond’s wife, “I can only offer your James Bond unlimited use of the name Ian Fleming… perhaps one day he will discover some particularly horrible species of bird that he would like to christen in an insulting fashion.”

Fleming also gave Bond a first edition copy of “You Only Live Twice,” which he inscribed, “To the real James Bond, from the thief of his identity.” It sold at auction for nearly $85,000 in 2008.

The bird expert Bond died at age 89 in 1990. The ageless, timeless espionage agent is doing quite well in the 21^st century, with plans in the works for “James Bond 26.” While we don’t know yet which actor will play the legendary figure in the coming movie, it’s likely there will be at least one vodka martini—shaken, not stirred.  

Have comments, questions or suggestions you’d like to share with Mark? Message him at jmp.press@gmail.com.