Stuff they avoided telling us about Han Solo
- Thread starter FredH
- Start date
Yeah, but that’s given to him by an Imperial officer (or employee). Before that, he just insists on “just Han”, even when asked directly. Years later, even his son will be given the Solo surname rather than whatever Han’s original one was (or Organa). What’s up with that?
Perhaps his father fell in with some bad people, debts to criminals or something, and Han thinks telling anyone his real last name would cause his dad's lenders to come after him either to collect or to make an example of him, and he had enough problems of his own.
it's Palpatine
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO![/Vader]
Perhaps he wanted to disassociate himself from his father. I've considered changing my last name for that very reason.
That works fine, but it implies a story we haven’t been told — namely, why? — that would be pretty fundamental to Han’s character.
Saying he has no people seemed to confirm that for me. He wants to be on his own.
But do we really need a story about that? Wouldn't it be enough to say Han was ashamed of his family (or just his father) and wanted to separate himself as far as possible? As indicted by Turtletrekker, that's more enough motivation to feel real.
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Maybe not — but it’s weird to know that Han was ashamed of his father but have no idea why. For that matter, to not even know if that’s what it was; we don’t know what his motivation was for not giving a surname. It obviously weighs heavily on Han and, really, his entire life; if it didn’t, he’d just be going by Han Schwartzberger (or whatever) and not care. As a sort-of analogy, it’s as if a character was constantly looking over his shoulder his entire life, and we never got any inkling as to why.
(All of this comes from including Solo, of course. If that film had never been made, the natural understanding would be that Han’s just from a family named Solo, the end. But Solo makes it a thing, however briefly, and it’s a seemingly fundamental missing piece that changes our picture of Han’s headspace.)
Maybe he just knew him as "Dad" or "Father", or whatever first/nickname he had. Never occurred to Han to add the suffix "-son" to it.
Nah. I thought it was clever.
Yeah, that was my thought as well. According to Wikipedia the Han Solo & Chewbacca comic gives his father's name as Ovan, but it doesn't appear to give him a last name. It's on my list but I haven't read it yet, so I'm not sure what the context of it is. Maybe they come from a culture that doesn't use last names? Wookiepedia doesn't have a last name for Qi'ra either, so maybe she comes from the same culture or maybe they give up their last names when they join the White Worms and it's been so long Han doesn't remember it any more.
His last name was Some. He got tired of the jokes.
Could be worse. Imagine if his last name were Job...
my actual name.)
I too have a name which many have made some unfortunate and immature jokes about. It gets old quickly.
Thankfully in my case that stopped after middle school, ~35 years ago. But there's a recent phenomenon that I can't get restaurants to record my name correctly on orders. There's one in particular that has put my name down as CJ, DJ, EJ, PJ, and TJ, but not BJ! Either their software won't let them, or they're scared to put down what they think is a "joke" name in the system. 
