How characters received their names

[alpha_leonis]

For some reason, I find the following stories fascinating:

• Montgomery Scott was named after James Doohan's grandfather.
• Khan Noonien Singh and Noonien Soong were both named after an Indian gentleman that Gene Roddenberry had met in some context (during his military service?), and he used the character names as a way to try to reconnect with that man.
• Christine Chapel's name is a pun on the Sistine Chapel.
• Geordi LaForge was named after George LaForge, a quadriplegic fan of TOS who died in 1975.
• Odo's name was deliberately created as a palindrome, as a reflection on the character's mysterious origins and personality. (The in-universe "adapted Cardassian/Bajoran" story was tacked on later.)
• Jonathan Archer was originally supposed to be named Jackson Archer, but the name was changed when the producers discovered there is already exactly one *real* Jackson Archer in the United States, and they didn't want the legal liability of "naming a character after a real person", even unintentionally.

Any other stories like these that anybody's aware of?

 

[Christopher]

Khan Noonien Singh and Noonien Soong were both named after an Indian gentleman that Gene Roddenberry had met in some context (during his military service?), and he used the character names as a way to try to reconnect with that man.

Actually, according to recent research by John and Maria Tenuto, it was a Chinese man named Noonien Wang. Which clears up a lot for me, because "Noonien" is very much not an Indian name. (It's weird that Roddenberry would give a Chinese name to a Sikh character, but back then, Americans seemed to treat all of Asia as one interchangeable mass. I recently watched a 1965 Man from UNCLE episode in which a line from the Rubaiyat, a Persian poem, is used as a code name for a boy lama from a Himalayan country!)

Any other stories like these that anybody's aware of?

Well, we already have a thread on how Sulu was named for the Sulu Sea in the Philippines to represent his "pan-Asian" heritage, and "Uhura" is the Swahili word for freedom, uhuru, with a Latin feminine suffix grafted on.

Commodore Robert Wesley was named after a pseudonym Roddenberry had used early in his writing career. Wesley was his middle name, and was also the source of Wesley Crusher's name.

Jean-Luc Picard was originally called Julien Picard. His surname was in honor of the Piccard family of scientists and balloonists. Will Riker was going to be Bill Ryker. "Data" was supposed to be pronounced with a short A, according to the original writers' bible. Julian Bashir was going to be Julian Amoros. Janeway's first name was originally Elizabeth, then Nicole during Genevieve Bujold's brief tenure in the role, finally becoming Kathryn after the Hepburnesque Kate Mulgrew was cast.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

In "What are Little Girls Made Of?", Helen Noel must have been named for the fact that Kirk met her at a Christmas party.

And Lethe, the zombie-like inmate, is named for the river of forgetfulness in Hades.

 

[Third Nacelle]

How is it I never realized this before?

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Guinan was named after Texas Guinan, a famous bartender

JemHadar I hear was an Indian name meaning Warrior. Now I'm reading it was Hindi. I'll try to get confirmation.

Locutus means "one who speaks"

Though not a name, April 5 was chosen because it was the writer's son's birthday.

Butler was named after Shatner's dog that had recently died. He was originally going to be named Jake, after a dog that belonged to a writer that had died. Overruled on the set by the Shat!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

In "What are Little Girls Made Of?", Helen Noel must have been named for the fact that Kirk met her at a Christmas party.

And Lethe, the zombie-like inmate, is named for the river of forgetfulness in Hades.

Ahem, that's Dagger of the Mind.

 

[Christopher]

JemHadar I hear was an Indian name meaning Warrior. Now I'm reading it was Hindi. I'll try to get confirmation.

Umm, Hindi is the main language spoken in India. No contradiction there. Although jemadar is actually from Urdu, another Indian language, and is in turn derived from Persian and Arabic. It was a historic term for generals serving the nobility, although it had various other meanings and was adopted in the British Indian Army as an equivalent to lieutenant's rank.

Along similar lines, "Ferengi" is derived from the Arabic or Persian word for a European (derived from "Frank," i.e. a Frenchman). Why, I have no idea.

Though not a name, April 5 was chosen because it was the writer's son's birthday.

Took me some digging to figure out that was the date of First Contact. You could also mention that Brannon Braga chose his hometown of Bozeman, Montana as the site of that event (and also named Captain Bateson's ship after it).

 

[Harvey]

A couple of more obscure, but interesting ones, from my research...

For "The Savage Curtain," de Forest Research made this naming contribution on December 3, 1968:

Lvak – No conflicts, however, during three seasons, the precedent has been established of giving male Vulcans names beginning with the letter “S.” E.G.s: Spock, Sarek, Stonn, etc. To conform, suggest: Savak, Solak, Surak...

For "Whom Gods Destroy," de Forest Research made this contribution on September 10, 1967:

Garth of Titan – Titan is the name of Saturn’s largest moon. By Star Trek time, 200 years in future, our solar system will be suburbia. Is this meant to indicate that Garth comes from Titan? If meant to indicate an exploit, suggest: Garth of Izar.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

TV shows can't name a character after anybody out of the 300 million people in the United States?

How do any TV characters have common names?!

 

[Third Nacelle]

^It's fine to give a character a name that 10,000 people have. They just don't use a name that only one person has.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

I've heard that's why they changed Archer's first name from Jackson to Jonathan. Can anyone confirm?

 

[R. Star]

I heard the Romulans were inspired by the Romans.

 

[Third Nacelle]

Romulus and Remus were named after the mythical twins that founded Rome.

 

[scotpens]

I heard the Romulans were inspired by the Romans.

Even to the point of having a character named Decius and being ruled by a Praetor in "Balance of Terror."

As for the Klingons, the story is that they were named after Lt. Wilbur Clingan, a colleague of Gene Roddenberry's when he was an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

In "What are Little Girls Made Of?", Helen Noel must have been named for the fact that Kirk met her at a Christmas party.

And Lethe, the zombie-like inmate, is named for the river of forgetfulness in Hades.

Ahem, that's Dagger of the Mind.

Right. What the hell was I thinking? I somehow conflated the two episodes in a train of thought about two of the hottest women ever to guest on the show.

Anyway, WALGMO had Andrea the Android. And Ruk might have been a corruption of R.U.R.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.

...which also inspired the surname of Rayna Capek.

 

[Christopher]

TV shows can't name a character after anybody out of the 300 million people in the United States?

How do any TV characters have common names?!

The goal is to avoid names that are too identifiable with a specific individual -- either because there's only one person in the country with that name, as stated above, or because there's a real person with that name who comes too close to the character's description, e.g. having the same job. For instance, in the Dresden Files novels, one of the main characters is Chicago detective Karrin Murphy, but for the TV adaptation, the researchers learned there was a real Chicago detective named Karen Murphy, so they changed the character's name to Connie Murphy for the show.

It's related to the disclaimer you always see, "The characters in this show are fictitious and any resemblance to any individual, living or dead, is purely coincidental." It's a hedge against lawsuits for defamation in case someone thinks a fictional character is based on them and portraying them in a bad light, or otherwise undermining their ability to earn a livelihood.

 

[alpha_leonis]

It's related to the disclaimer you always see, "The characters in this show are fictitious and any resemblance to any individual, living or dead, is purely coincidental." It's a hedge against lawsuits for defamation in case someone thinks a fictional character is based on them and portraying them in a bad light, or otherwise undermining their ability to earn a livelihood.

Which I find really amusing, considering that my sister IRL is a young-adult novelist, and her first book was based directly on our family. A fictional version of me makes a couple of cameos as the main character's younger brother. And yet her book still carries that disclaimer!

 

[scotpens]

. . . It's related to the disclaimer you always see, "The characters in this show are fictitious and any resemblance to any individual, living or dead, is purely coincidental." It's a hedge against lawsuits for defamation in case someone thinks a fictional character is based on them and portraying them in a bad light, or otherwise undermining their ability to earn a livelihood.

Those disclaimers seem pretty silly in an obvious film à clef like The Rose or The Greek Tycoon. Of course, a different standard applies in the case of portraying public figures, whether or not the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

 

[Maurice]

"The names have been changed to protect us from lawsuits."

 

[CDR6]

Dr. McCoy being called "Bones" (TOS) a contraction of the term "Sawbones", which comes from the old nautical term for a doctor... and has nothing to do with a divorce... (ST 2009)