Cellphone mystery: wrong number, but they have my name. What's going on?

Today for the third time I received a misdirected text message—definitely not meant for me—but the sender was addressing a recipient with the same name as mine.

This might not be so odd if my name were a popular one like Carol or Linda or Anne. But it’s almost (though not quite) as unusual as Jeruba. This makes me wonder if, somehow, somebody is looking up a cell number by name and getting a match on me even though I’m the wrong “Jeruba.”

These messages don’t seem to be from the same person. The first was about two years ago, and I forget what that was, but it was something personal, such as “I forgot I have to go to the dentist this afternoon—can you pick up the kids?” A little over a year ago, the second was from someone who thought she was addressing her daughter—she said she was running behind and would be late for lunch. My mother had been dead for a year by then, so it was really weird to get a message from “Mom.”

Today the message asked how the boys are and if he/she could pick them up after school. My sons are in their twenties and not in school and doing their own driving.

These messages indicate a relationship and imply that the caller(s) would be using this number all the time. So how are their misdirected messages ending up at my cellphone—AND being addressed to someone with the same unusual first name as mine?

Can anyone offer a hypothesis to explain this?

(I’m putting this in Social so no one gets zapped for a mild digression, but I am really hoping for plausible answers.)