Hello everyone!

As I was watching Ep. IV the other day, I started thinking about something, and I wondered about this for a long time after I saw it. The question that has plagued me for the past several days is this:

Why did Obi-Wan change his name?

I understand, obviously, that he changed it to remain hidden from Palps, Vader, and the Empire, but if he was trying to hide, wouldn't he have changed his last name?

I mean, if he was afraid Vader would search out anyone with the name of Obi-Wan (which I'm sure was not a common name... but one never knows, do they?), then what he did makes sense. But if he was really really trying to hide from the galaxy, wouldn't he have changed his entire name? I'm sure Kenobi isn't all that common either.

If anybody was going to report him, I'm sure they would have noticed that his last name was Kenobi, and that that was the last name of a known surviving Jedi. They wouldn't care that his first name was Ben and not Obi-Wan.

So this is why I am still confuzzled over this issue. I just don't get why Obi-Wan would choose to change his first name and not his last name when he knew how serious and dangerous the situation was. I refuse to believe that he was that careless.

Help me with this!! Does anybody know why?

May the Force be With You, Happy 30th Anniversary, and see you at CIV!

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It is not impossible that to some infinitely superior being the whole universe may be as one plain, the distance between planet and planet being only as the pores in a grain of sand, and the spaces between system and system no greater than the intervals between one grain and the grain adjacent.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Omniania