Definition of "Toby"

By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier o' nights: your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours.

c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene iii]

And for my own part, said my uncle Toby, though I should blush to boast of myself, Trim - yet had my name been Alexander, I could have done no more at Namur than my duty.

1761, [Laurence Sterne], chapter 18, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, volume IV, London: […] R[obert] and J[ames] Dodsley […]

His name was Toby Bell and he was entirely alone in his criminal contemplations. [ - - - ] As to the Toby, which might by the sound of it set him higher on the English social ladder than his provenance deserved, it derived from nothing more elevated than his father's pride in the holy man Tobias, whose wondrous filial virtues are set down in the ancient scripts.

2013, John le Carré, A Delicate Truth, Penguin UK

The Boy shakes his head and the Toby comes on to the market wielding a claw hammer.

2006, David Eldridge, Market Boy, page 29

But every market was reputed to be run the same way. The Toby was the godfather.

2010, Howard Jacobson, The Mighty Walzer, page 82

At first, neither of them seemed to notice it until the Toby (market traders name for the market manager) in charge of the market started shouting and waving his arms telling the driver that he couldn't park there.

2011, Des Thompson, Naive Diamond, page 195