My name is Michael I got a nickel and a pretty different nick name. In the “real world” everyone calls me Mike. Blah…. My mother named me after my father, therefore I am a Jr. The problem is, there were too many Mikes, Micks, Mickies, Michaels etc in the family already. Not to mention the two Michaels that were born the same year as me.
My mother was a fan of the TV Show “Family Affair” one of the characters on the show was named Jody. My mother thought it would be nice to give me a nickname that was not a derivative of Michael. This way there would be no confusion when my name was mentioned, called, yelled for etc…
My father on the other hand did not like that idea. I am told that he promised to put me in dresses if that were to be my nick name.
The D in Jody became a B and my nick name “Joby” was chosen.
For years I thought I was the only one in the world with that name. That is until I was in the 1st grade. I had missed my stop on the school bus and had to ride the whole route and back to the school. I sat alone behind the bus driver on the way back to the school where I was to be picked up by my none-to-happy mother.
The ride was lonely and I was scared. The driver started asking me questions to keep me occupied. The first of which was “What is your name son?” I answered with a quiet voice “Joby sir.” He laughed and said he did not believe me. I told him the story of how my real name was Michael and Joby was a nick name. He said “That is too funny, my REAL name is Joby.” I rode back to the school in quiet anticipation. I could not wait to tell my mother that I was not the only Joby in the world.
I did not know of any other “Joby’s” in my area until High School were there was an upperclassman with that nick name as well.
Years later, I found out just how common my name was in the world. I went to Google.com and did a search using “Joby” as a keyword. Today that search provides:
- 2,130,000 web search results.
- 56,200 Image search results
- 479 video search results
- 56 news search results
My search did not stop there, I also searched Amazon and got the following.
So as you can see, “Joby” is a pretty cool nick name to have.
- Joby
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