Why not Luke Lars?

It is one of my all time questions...

Why didn't Luke take the surname of his uncle for protection?

Maybe Tatooine is in the outer rim, but the name Skywalker could ring a bell to the empirial forces and cause trouble to Luke....

 

Then: "Luke Lars" sounds really stupid. Like maybe Luke should've been asking Uncle Owen if he'd seen his baseball while wearing earmuffs.

Now: It still sounds stupid.

 

Luke was very well hidden from the Empire, and the Sith on Tatooine. So, there was really no need for Luke to change his surname.

The scene with Yoda, Bail Organa, and Obi-Wan talking about what to do with Skywalker twins on the Tantive IV in ROTS pretty much explains it.

 

Tatooine was controlled by the Hutts...

though it explains why Owen didn't want Luke heading off to the academy...

 

This was actually one of the questions Lucas was asked at CV... he said he envisioned Skywalker as being a common enough name that it wouldn't be remarkable (which is strange, because Yoda's "there is another Skywalker" loses its meaning if you take Skywalker to be the GFFA equivalent of Smith, but meh, we all know Lucas is making it up as he goes, right?)

 

Luke Lars does sound pretty horrible, so I can see why he was able to keep his surname even while on Tatooine.

 

When I say this movie as a kid, I heard he was Luke Skywalker and his uncle and aunt were the Lars. Once we got further into the saga, I learned since basically Anakin IS his father, and Owen and Beru are his aunt and uncle.

 

In a galaxy with that many people, almost any name is going to be pretty common.

The bigger issue would be the oft-discussed "why was Luke taken to Anakin's homeworld and specifically to a farm Anakin/Vader knew of". However, given that Vader probably wanted to stay as far away from there as possible (death of his mother, anyone?), I don't have a problem with that either.

 

Agreed on both points.

 

Then, for you, Anakin is not the father of Leia, because her surname is Organa....

All I wanted to say is that spies, bounty hounters, anyone working for the Empire could be dangerous for someone under the name Skywalker....

 

At the time, Luke having the name "Skywalker" wasn't a problem, because he wasn't originally Vader's son, AND Vader hadn't come from Tatooine as a child, himself.

It's not until the Vader=Anakin change that Ben's judgement in placing Luke on Tatooine becomes potentially problematic. Then again, Vader doesn't set foot on Tatooine anyways (either because it's not necessary, or because of the convenient EU-after-the-fact explanation of his mother), so it's just glossed over.

 

Of course, there nothing that says he wouldn't check there first if given the chance..

 

I think this is one of those things you just can't over think. Nope, doesn't make sense that he kept the last name Skywalker, but it is what it is. This doesn't bother me as much as Obi-Wan saying "Only a master of evil Darth". I hate that he called him Darth, probably bothers me as much as ewoks (the spelling wookie backwards and cutting them in half aspect of ewoks) and Jar Jar, if not more. It can't really be explained or justified, it's just a mistake (from a certain point of view, of course).

 

It's just another one of those little details that comes about when episode 4 set out to tell a completely different story than episode 1-3 came to tell. I find I enjoy it all most if I just kind of go with the flow.

 

Yes, my first view on that when I heard Obi-Wan calling Vader "Darth", like it is his first name and not a Sith title, was that when Lucas made New Hope his intention was not to make all the Sith "Darths"...

Maybe this was later decided...

 

There's no proof that Shmi changed her maiden name when she married Cleig Lars. Plus Owen Lars and Beru only met Anakin once. They knew who he was. Luke Skywalker was his real name because he's Anakin's son, and Padme was married to Anakin. So, his name is Luke Skywalker. Obi-Wan did what needed to be done because Tattooine was safe, and out of the way, and he knew the Sidious and Vader would not detect Luke until they felt him through the Force once his training would begin.

 

it was most likely the decision of owen and beru. bail chooses to change leia's name, of course. but then again, i always figured it was intended to be public knowledge that leia was bail and his wife's legitimate daughter - giving her distinction as a member of the alderaan royal family that she might not have otherwise had.

there doesn't seem to be a common directive from yoda and obi-wan regarding it so i doubt there's any ploy of secrecy. why owen and beru would opt to have Luke maintain the skywalker surname could be any number of reasons. maybe they were just respectful of the fact his mother and father were both skywalker, so believed Luke should be too. its clearly no secret to anyone that Luke is not their son or even adopted son. so having him be called Lars makes little sense really, unless they were lying about Luke's parentage. and thats overkill anyway because, as others have said, Vader or anyone else is unlikely to go looking for his children because as far as he knows, Padme dies when still pregnant.

 

Skywalker is a badass and heroic name.

Lars is the name of a simple farmer.

 

Pretty much.

Names are way more important in SW than a likely story.

 

This:

and this:

... are both correct.

 

Also, keep in mind that, back when ANH was written, there was no conception of the whole Skywalker family tree as we know it today. Luke Starkiller (later Skywalker) was the son of Annikin Starkiller, the heroic Jedi; the reason he was raised by his aunt and uncle was that his father had been killed by the evil Sith Lord Darth Vader. Luke didn't need to change his name, because it wasn't an important detail. The elder Starkiller/Skywalker was likely just one of the many Jedi that Vader had killed in the Purge. As well, since Vader was somebody totally different from Annikin, he had no intrinsic connection to Tatooine, and no reason to search for family members there.

As for Leia, originally Organa was her birth surname, and she was the legitimate daughter of the rulers of Alderaan. She wasn't adopted, and she certainly wasn't Luke's twin sister yet (for one thing, the script flat-out states she's 16 years old, compared with Luke's 18-20).

"Organa" as a name actually came about because, in the third draft of the script (the first one to feature Leia as the damsel in distress), she was named after her home planet, Organa Major. That is, Leia was Leia Organa because she was the princess of the ruling family of Organa Major. It's a dynastic title for a Royal House, much akin to how European nobles possess aristocratic titles that are based on place names (e.g. "Duke of Norfolk"). Nobles also use those place names as the equivalent of surnames (the Duke, for instance, would use "Norfolk" as his signature). In fact, in Shakespeare's day this association of nobles' names with the actual places they ruled was taken as far up as the kingship (in Macbeth, for instance, a character refers to the King of Norway as "Norway himself"), although this is mostly no longer true.

Leia having a royal surname goes back as far as the first draft, when she was named "Leia Aquilae" and was the Princess (later Queen) of the planet Aquilae.

However, this rather fine detail was all shot to hell in Lucas's fourth draft, when Organa Major was renamed to Alderaan. (Alderaan, incidentally, was a name only freed up after Lucas deleted the Imperial prison planet of Alderaan; originally that was where Leia was going to be incarcerated. All the scenes set there were later moved to the Death Star. Lucas must have liked the planet's name a lot--it appears as early as the first draft--and wanted to keep it in, even at the expense of dropping the connection between Leia's surname and her planetary-royal status.)

 

I don't know how much the EU counts around here, but a Star Wars Tales story says that Owen kept the Skywalker name for Luke to honor Shmi's memory.

 

Aside from alliterative appeal, it really doesn't sound as good as Luke Skywalker.

 

i totally agree

 

Vader thought his kid was dead, (even before the Jedi thought he was dead - for a while anyway) - and the Jedi knew Vader thought his kid was dead (Padme was buried with a lump in her stomach) - so he would not assume any skywalker was related to him. Palpatine thought Padme's kid had died with her too. Since they are the only two who knew that the kids belonged to Anakin (outside of those few Jedi and Organa), that was the only concern and so...no need to change the last name. Anakin had no father that he or anyone knew of, so the name would have been a family one and Luke could just be a stray cousin or whatever - or not related if it was that popular.

Hence, no need for the horrible Luke Lars.