Rob Hope

Today’s Prompt

What is your middle name? Does it hold any special significance?

My middle name is David.

I’m named after the oldest brothers of my parents, Robert Dearth on my mother’s side, and David Hope on my father’s side. I’m not a particularly sentimental person, so while those names have meaning to my parents, I’ve never reflected on that fact too much.

That said, there was a significant time period where I considered going by my middle name. My name has been a source of consternation for much of my life. There were many times in my childhood where we relocated, changing schools and homes, and any one of those presented an opportunity to make a change. Such things were not as prevalent or encouraged as they might be today, so I stuck it out.

I don’t like the nickname Bob. For those of you who don’t know who Bob Hope is, you might not find this relatable. But the sheer amount of Bob Hope jokes that plagued my youth still haunt me to this day. Jokes about USO tours and Brooke Shields and on and on and on. My wife can relate to a degree; her family name is Scully and Vin Scully provided similar, well, amusement I suppose. And I guess because of the famous name, shaking the nickname Bob was difficult.

I don’t particularly care for Robbie, or at least I didn’t once I hit my teen years. My uncle, one of the most important people in my life, settled for calling me Robe (short for Bathrobe) for some reason; I made the mistake of admitting that during a team event at work and that stuck for a bit. I’ve pretty much chosen Rob as my nickname since high school.

Generally I’m fine with Robert, there are many people I know who call me that.

People ignored my wishes, in fact often they still make the mistake of calling me Bob to this day. I remember a little league coach calling me out to my mother about how I ignored him when he called on me by the name Bob. She reminded him it wasn’t my name and suggested he make a change. Today I let it go, but I still do my best to make sure that my nickname is in use on things like my company’s directory and my LinkedIn profile.

At the end of the day, I don’t think of myself as a David or a Dave…so I’m glad I didn’t take that step.

This post is one of many in my responses to random prompts surfaced by the application that tracks my website statistics, as well as any others I encounter.