Robotperson

My wife and I were chatting with my mother over Christmas when somehow, alarmingly, the subject of baby names came up. I remembered that a while ago Mum had told me she’d decided on the name Robert because it began with an R, which she liked particularly because of her own initial (Mother’s name is Rita).

I skilfully brought this up to steer the conversation onto safer ground, and Mum surprised me with the revelation that yes, the ‘R’ thing was partly it, but because I was also a very round baby she thought I ought to have a round sounding name. Robert fitted the bill on both counts, and so Robert it was to be.

So that’s me then, Round Robert.

Seemingly like so many things recently (I really must be tedious to live with) this has become another robotperson catchphrase. Correct usage, and maybe I need to write my own brand guidelines here, has it sung to the tune of the idents at the end of the Danone adverts: "Mmmm, Danone"

- Mmmm, Danone
– Round Robert

You too, can have fun if your name has two syllables: "Mmmm, Cassie"; "Mmmm, Stefan". Others might try the Intel ident, which is also good for creating personal jingles.

Anyway, giving a baby a name that seems to fit the newly emerged form is an idea which appeals considerably to me. The notion that a name can well up naturally from the feel a baby projects somehow makes the naming a little more absolute and a little less arbitrary.

And that only leaves me to hope that when my firstborn eventually pops out I don’t – please God – find the name ‘Ginger’ being suggested to me.

Update! – Sat 21 Feb

Here’s what Mum had to add on the subject:

you neglected to say that you were round because you were huge… including your head… tell me about it! You also had huge brown eyes and a rosebud mouth… need I go on. You would have been a beautiful advert baby for SMA!

Mother also added that because I was such a beautiful baby, she would never leave me in my pram outside a shop (which presumably happened a lot in the seventies) for fear that someone would just take me .

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2004 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Robotica. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.