How Star Wars' George Lucas came up with R2-D2's name

R2-D2 might have been one of the mainstays of the Skywalker Saga in Star Wars, but you might not have been aware of where the faithful droid got his name.

We don't mean in the movies themselves – it's because he's an R2 series astromech droid. Instead, we're talking about where George Lucas got the inspiration for naming the character R2-D2.

And it turns out that it's linked to his time working on his debut movie THX 1138.

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Even though R2-D2 doesn't stand for anything in particular in the Star Wars universe, it's actually something Lucas heard while working on THX 1138.

"We were working late one night on THX 1138, and we were looking for 'Reel 2, Dialogue 2' and so somebody yelled out get 'R2D2' – and Walter Murch, who was mixing the film, and I both loved that name so much that we decided that it was a good name for something," Lucas said in The Making of Star Wars.

"We just kept playing with it, so I put it down in my notebook and that's where it came from."

The reel that inspired R2-D2 was on display at Skywalker Ranch in April 2018 for a screening of American Graffiti.

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R2-D2's name wasn't the only one that was inspired in some way by THX 1138 though.

According to The Making of Star Wars, THX 1138 actor Terry McGovern was improvising voice overs when he said, "I think I just ran over a Wookiee".

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And then when Lucas was coming up with the name of Chewbacca: "I came up with a whole bunch of Wookiee words, just changing words around, and I liked Chewbacca the best."

Unfortunately, there's not a similar lightbulb moment of inspiration for R2-D2's long-suffering partner C-3PO, despite a rumour that the droid was named after a post office at point C3 on a map of Lucas's hometown.

As Lucas notes in the same book: "Once I had R2-D2, I had to do something sort of like it, so I just made up another one."

Other names from A New Hope that didn't come from anything other than Lucas's imagination include Moff Tarkin ("made up out of nowhere"), Obi-Wan Kenobi ("out of thin air") and Han Solo ("it could have been from some Solo [paper] cups").

As for the Big Bad himself, Darth Vader, the name just "appeared in my head one day" as Lucas had "lots of Darth this and Darth that, and Dark Lord of the Sith".

"The early name was actually Dark Water. Then I added lots of last names, Vaders and Wilsons and Smiths, and I just came up with the combination of Darth and Vader," he recalled.

Dark Water wouldn't have exactly struck fear into the hearts of the Rebels now, would it?

Right: so where did "Salacious B Crumb" come from?

Star Wars: A New Hope and the rest of the Skywalker Saga is available to watch on Disney+.

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Ian Sandwell

Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.