Do you teach your kids Lucas or Hughes?

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (namely the mid-1970s in central California), a USC graduate named George Lucas was enjoying the success of his first major film, American Graffiti (which incidentally starred a young Harrison Ford, pre-Solo). Lucas was also pulling together the early drafts of what would become the cultural phenomenon we now know as Star Wars, the first cinematic ‘epic saga’ in modern times. But the protagonist of the 1977 release Star Wars was not originally a moisture-farm hand named Luke Skywalker. One of the early names the filmmaker tried on the character was Luke Starkiller, and the character was a bookish historian more intent on cataloging the deeds of "the ancients" than going on any interstellar adventure. In another draft, Starkiller was even a grizzled old general, not the wistful teen we remember. And would you believe that the light and dark sides of the Force were once called the Ashla and the Bogan, respectively?

At least it’s not hard to figure out why Lucas chose Luke as a first name for his Jedi-to-be.