Bob from Chicago

Would a pope by any other name smell as sweet?

His name is Bob. He’s from Chicago, likes to play Wordle, and roots for the White Sox.

No, he’s not a high school gym teacher or the manager of the local Jewel.

He’s Pope Leo XIV, the newly elected leader of the Catholic Church and, for the first time in the 2000-year history of the papacy, he was born in the U.S.

While some of us were hoping for a certain other American, after a two-day conclave the job ultimately went to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, a Villanova graduate known to his friends as “Bob.”

The initial shock of the news—a pope from the United States? Really??—gave way to a wave of other feelings. For the people of Chicago, there was an outburst of intense civic pride, which resulted in a deluge of memes about #DaPope, deep-dish pizza, and the Bulls. The Weiners Circle, a notorious hot dog stand in Chicago, got in on the joke with a marquee written in Latin.

This inspired bits about how typically modest Midwesterners were suddenly clout-chasing the Holy Father. (“My dad’s friend from college went to elementary school with his brother!”)

There has also been rampant speculation about what it means that the pope is from the U.S. Was it an attempt by the church to counter Trump’s malignant influence with a more moderate American voice on the global stage? What did it mean that Pope Leo had tweeted critically about JD Vance, a Catholic convert?

Since Thursday, biographical details have emerged of the new pontiff, painting a picture of a reserved and devout man with Midwestern roots but a decidedly global outlook. The youngest of three brothers, Pope Leo grew up just outside Chicago but has spent much of his adult life abroad, earning him the nickname “The Latin Yankee.” He is a naturalized citizen of Peru and is fluent in Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Yet he also remains engaged in our politics, voting in Will County, Illinois in 2024. Though he is not registered with either party, he voted in the state’s Republican primary in 2016 (which Trump won by 8%) and 2012 (which Romney won by 11%).

According to his older brother John, who gave an interview to NBC Chicago a few hours after the white smoke emerged last Thursday, Leo watched the movie Conclave right before sequestering for the actual…conclave. John also cleared up the essential detail that his brother supports the White Sox, not the Cubs, as was previously reported. Like many families in the U.S., the Prevosts don’t necessarily agree on politics. His brother Louis, a self-described conservative who lives in Florida, has a history of making crude Facebook posts about Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.

I don’t know if Pope Leo XIV will be a progressive like Francis, or if he will win over the increasingly vocal — and powerful — Catholic right in the U.S.

I do know there is something disorienting, yet also promising, about “Bob from Chicago” becoming pope. It’s all there in the relatable, straightforward, unpretentious name.

“Bob” has an everyman quality to it. Yet this country has produced many great Bobs: Dylan. Newhart. Fosse. Villa. Odenkirk. Mackie. (We didn’t produce Marley, but he was great, too.)

Strangely, even though we’ve had presidents with ridiculous names like Rutherford Grover, and Herbert, we’ve never had one named Bob (or Robert, Rob, or Bobby).

Now, at least, we’ve got Pope Bob—a win for a name that deserves a comeback.

According to the Social Security Administration’s baby name database, Robert was the top name for boys in the 1930s, and remained in the top 10 for the next five decades, a sturdy name that, when shortened to the unadorned “Bob,” connoted basic decency and humility. (Except on Twin Peaks, where Bob was an avatar of evil.) Just three letters long, easy to pronounce, impossible to misspell, and yet also edgy enough to be a palindrome, “Bob” truly has it all.

In an era of Ashers and Jaydens, it’s rare to find anyone under the age of 50 named Bob. Even “Robert” barely ekes out a slot in the top 100 boys’ names.. “Bob and Bobby have been out of style since the 1960s,” says the baby name website Nameberry, “but as vintage nickname-names—Fred, Archie—come back into vogue, Bob may tag along.”

Meanwhile, to find another guy named Robert who was pope—or at least claimed to be—you have to go all the way back to 1378, when Robert de Genève became Antipope Clement VII. We can’t know for sure whether he preferred deep dish, but we do know that his election was controversial, resulting in a schism that lasted four decades.

Let’s hope this “Bob” fares better.

Meredith Blake is the Culture columnist for The Contrarian