What's in a name?

I'm a bit of a spelling freak. Nothing amuses me more than professionally made signs with spelling or grammar mistakes, and one of my favourite books is 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves' by Lynne Truss (which shockingly has several dozen punctuation errors itself!). But what does this have to do with babies? Well its a bit of a story...

Today I went out with my mum to visit her work friend, Sally and her two month old bundle of joy, Noah. Oh how sweet and precious he is! But could I relax while holding him? No. Simple thought of “you break it, you bought it” running through my head meant that I held on to him for dear life for about five minutes before I offered my mum a hold. She thought I was being nice, giving up my 'turn'... but it was pure and blind panic that motivated me.

So we were chatting about the usual things a new mother would talk about to a pregnant woman – just how freaking tired she was, but how it is all worth it – when we got on to the subject of the announcement. Sally asked to be put on our official 'text list' for when Tricky is born but suggested we don't tell anyone until the next day so that the initial bonding stages aren't interrupted by people coming to see the little guy (I'm a realist, I know they wouldn't be coming to see me). At this point Sally's husband David started laughing and said I should make sure to spell Tricky's name correctly in the text message. What? I didn't quite get what he meant, so he continued...

David had sent a group text to approximately 20 people and had used the predictive text function on his phone, which didn't have Noah stored in the dictionary. Without noticing he announced the happy arrival of his new son 'Mobi'. Texts flooded back congratulating them and commenting on the name choice (I'm sure Moby fans would have thought it very cool). David sent a second text immediately correcting the mistake, and finally Noah had his name. Oh well, not so bad, a few people thought he had an unusual name there for a few minutes, nothing to worry about... or was there? In the short time between the first and second texts one of the recipients had jumped straight on the phone to purchase a gift... and that is why the Fremantle Dockers now have a junior member called Mobi.