Fictional namesake
Ian Fleming, who was a keen bird watcher living in Jamaica, was familiar with Bond's book, and chose the name of its author for the hero of Casino Royale in 1953, apparently because he wanted a name that sounded "as ordinary as possible". Fleming wrote to the real Bond's wife, "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born." He did not contact the real James Bond about using his name in the books, and Bond did not learn of Fleming's character until the early 1960s, when Fleming's James Bond books became popular in the U.S. In 1964 during Fleming's annual winter stay at Goldeneye in Jamaica, James Bond and his wife visited Fleming unexpectedly. In his novel Dr. No Fleming referenced Bond's work by basing a large ornithological sanctuary on Dr. No's island in the Bahamas. In 1964, Fleming gave Bond a first edition copy of You Only Live Twice signed, "To the real James Bond, from the thief of his identity". In December 2008 the book was put up for auction, eventually fetching $84,000 (£56,000).
James Bond's wife told Fleming that her husband saw the use of his name for the character as a good joke, to which Fleming replied "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 which he would like to christen in an insulting fashion."
In 1966, James Bond's wife, Mary Fanning Wickham Bond, published a small book, "How 007 Got His Name". It details her husband's life and discovery of the appropriation of his name along with their meeting Ian Fleming and the Hilary Brays at Goldeneye on February 5, 1964. By happenstance, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was filming an interview that day.
The story of James Bond and his wife, Mary Fanning Wickham Bond, discovering Ian Fleming's theft of the name, before contacting and meeting Fleming at Goldeneye is told in the 2022 documentary The Other Fellow. The film chronicles the lives of several men named James Bond and shows a film, not previously broadcast, of the Bonds meeting Fleming, as well as interviews with James and Mary that were discovered by the film's director Matthew Bauer.
In the 2002 Bond film Die Another Day, the fictional Bond, played by Pierce Brosnan, can be seen examining Birds of the West Indies in an early scene that takes place in Havana, Cuba. The author's name on the front cover is obscured. In the same film, when Bond first meets Jinx (Halle Berry), he introduces himself as an ornithologist. In the 2015 Bond film Spectre, the same book was seen in a promotional on-set photo; the book appeared in an alternate take - unused for the released film - of a scene taking place in Bond's Chelsea apartment.
In the ITV Miss Marple murder mystery "A Caribbean Mystery", broadcast on 16 June 2013, Miss Marple meets Ian Fleming at a talk on "Birds of the West Indies", given by James Bond. Before the talk begins, Fleming tells Miss Marple that he's working on a new book, but trying to come up with a name for the character. When the speaker introduced himself, Fleming has a moment of inspiration and reaches for his notebook, as the first few bars of the film theme play. The talk by the ornithologist James Bond is on guano which figures in the background and plot of the James Bond spy novel Dr. No. This instance of James Bond was played by Charlie Higson, who wrote the Young Bond novels.
