My given name was Barbara. When I was in elementary school it became clear that Barbara was a very popular girl’s name the year I was born. Seemed that almost every girl was named Barbara, Ellen, or Mary. So I called myself ‘Bobbie’. That was pretty confusing too, since the nickname for Barbara, Roberta, and Robert was Bobbie or Bobby. Whether someone called out ‘Barbara’ or ‘Bobby’, there were many heads up.

By the time I was in Junior High School, my cousin Madelyn and I were trying to decide what one-name ‘stage’ name we should use when we each became famous. Because there was no doubt that we would each be famous for something. So we decided on Bobi-Jo and Mady-Jo as our special names. Except for our private giggle-sessions, we did not really use these names in public. When I went to college though, I had my close friends use my special nickname of BobiJo. In fact, when I was 17, on a bus ride to the country, I struck up a conversation with a man – a philosophical discussion, of course – and I told him I was going to be a writer, and he should look for the name BobiJo.

When I moved to Texas, it just seemed natural to call myself BobiJo. I could not get a personalized license plate since every way I could think to spell it had already been taken, but I decided to drop the hyphen and to be ‘BobiJo’ in Texas. And my cousin, who now lives in the state of Washington, and who might not even remember those long-ago giggle-sessions, has taken MadyJo as her email handle.

That is the history of my being BobiJo, which I have since discovered is in baby-naming books. I may not have been here early enough to get a personalized license plate, but I grabbed up BobiJo.Com as soon as the dot-com names were available to register, and I booked it for 10 years, about a year or two before I was ready to do anything with it. I even got an email from a young girl named BobiJo who just happened to see my web site, and thought it was cool that we have the same name.