One thing I never understood was why they left Luke's name as Skywalker, and didn't put any effort into hiding who his father was. I know it obviously wasn't public knowledge that Vader was Anakin, but as we saw in the comics and then into Empire Strikes Back, all it took was one mention of his last name for word to get back to Vader.
Wouldn't it have been safer for everyone to just do the same thing they did with Leia and just call him Luke Lars and say he was an orphan they adopted and leave it at that.
I just read Leia, Princess of Alderaan, and I think there was a part where it addressed what Leia was told about her birth parents, but I can't remember what it was.
Did they though? The first time we hear anyone say the name is in Leia's detention cell. For all we know he was living his whole life as Luke Lars, and abandoned that name for Skywalker when they left Tatooine because 1) he's literally taking up his father's legacy, and 2) Luke Lars is a wanted fugitive, suspected in trafficking in stolen Imperial technology. Indeed there's a whole scene where Ben gets him out of having to show his identification to a Stormtrooper. It's a safe bet that the name Lars would have raised way more flags than Skywalker at that point, given that they just got done torching that farm the day before.
On the other hand; who even says it's an uncommon name? Plus so far as Vader and Sidious are concerned, Anakin's offspring died with Padme decades ago. You can't find what you're not looking for, especially if it's on a remote moisture farm, on some Hutt controlled backwater. Hell, Kenobi still used his last name while hiding in that place, and Vader was actively hunting him for years to no avail. Clearly that dust bowl is well below the Empire's radar.
For all we know; Kenobi and Skywalker are fairly common human names, especially in the outer rim, and that's not even taking into account things like Obi-Wan's birth family, or Shmi having siblings or cousins that weren't enslaved by Hutts. It's a big galaxy after all.
A small aside, but one element Zahn introduced into his more recent Thrawn novels is the idea that 'Skywalker' is an old word for hyperspace navigators. So much like real world Smiths, Coopers, Fletchers etc. two people with the surname Skywalker is less likely to indicate a familial relationship, and more likely that they both simply have distant ancestors that were once navigators (possibly on spice frighters . . .)
