Michael Corvin

Yeah, that's what I was thinking when I posted. I remember that joke from the day Jackson was cast. It's also one of the biggest travesties of the PT. Let's cast Samuel Mother Fuckin' Jackson but make him a bigger pussy than Anakin.

candyrocket786

I always associated "Vader" with "Vater" (German for Father). I'm sure that association has been made at some point between '77 and now.

Loc Nar

Exactly. Sideous is to insidious as Vader is to invader . . . Han Solo is also kind of a loner.

wishbone

Growing up I heard that Vader got his name from his piloting skills, i.e. that he evaded enemy attacks and such.

TGM

Darth Vader = Dark Father

Guru Askew

It's a nice theory except for the fact that Darth Vader was nobody's father until a year or two after his on-screen debut. You can reverse-engineer all sorts of nonsense out of a fictional work but that doesn't mean the real-world facts are going to support it.

So yeah, the less-interesting but realistic explanation is that "Vader" is based on "Invader" just like "Sideous" is based on "Insideous" and "Tyrannus" is based on "Tyrant."

TGM

I think you may be taking the word "Father" a bit too literally... could easily just be a reference to the fact that he was an imposing figurehead with power. Or maybe he just liked diddling alterboys. Could also be your explanation as well. Don't really care either way, to be honest.

RocShemp

Your scream is far too real. You need to fake it more.

majorjoe23

Darth NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

kgrogers1979

That would be...

Timber

I guess I'm alone in think that Darth Vader, Darth Sideous, and Darth Maul are all pretty cool names. Tyrannus, not so much. Also strange that the name Sideous was never used in the OT. Wouldn't Vader refer to him as Lord Sideous when he was speaking to him and not "My Master"?

Guru Askew

Apparently not. Because he called him "my master" and not "Lord Sideous." Case closed.

And also no stranger than the names "Boba Fett" and "Anakin Skywalker" not being spoken on-screen until "Return of the Jedi." Or nobody saying "Palpatine" before the PT. The Star Wars saga is proof that you can actually go quite a while without ever using a character's name on-screen as long as you have action figures to tell everyone who's who.

FRwL

Anyone else not give two ****s about the entire sith/jedi shiat of the wars movies? seriiously the best shit was always the scoundrel and dilapitated stuff.

Obi-Wanma

That's because it wasn't decided that Palpatine was a Sith and had a Darth title until Lucas had to come up with a story for the prequels.

JTH182

Not to mention I think Darth was actually meant to be his first name and not a title back then.

Supermallet

Darth was definitely meant to be his first name in A New Hope at least, at one point Grand Moff Tarkin calls his "Darth". After that he's referred to either as Vader or Darth Vader.

Terminal

Definitely. Lucas made all this shit up as he went along. Darth went from Vader's actual name to the eventual title for any and all Siths. I wonder what the original plan for Darth was, after all.

Guru Askew

How does that prove that it was intended to be a first name?

I don't disagree that "Darth" as a title was a new development in the prequels. For all the unused stuff from scripts etc. that wound up in the Expanded Universe the title was never used prior to Darth Maul, but that's not to say that people wouldn't refer to a Sith as "Darth."

pinata242

To stay alive and report to the emperor, if he wasn't that himself.

Supermallet

Literally no other Sith Lord in the entirety of the OT, PT, or EU are ever referred to as "Darth" ever again. They're either referred to as "Darth [Name]" or just "[Name]".

Guru Askew

Which proves?

kgrogers1979

There was at least one time that Obi-Wan called him only by "Darth" as well.

"I've been waiting for you, Obi-Wan. We meet again at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master."
"Only a master of evil, Darth."

Guru Askew

Replace the word "Darth" in that quote with "Steve" and then replace it with "Captain." There is nothing contextual than would point one way or the other. Could be a name. Could be a title. But Lucas made it a title.

Lucas actually fucked some shit up. The whole Leia thing is a huge example. He has Luke frenching her, Obi-wan needs to be reminded of her lineage by Yoda and then she has these memories of her mother that only barely align with her brief time with her mother with no explanation of why Luke has no such memories. That is an undeniable failure of storytelling. That a couple characters say "Darth?" Not a flaw. Like the vast majorities of PT "flaws" it's just nitpicky fanboys complaining about nothing.

kgrogers1979

Obi-Wan definitely is not being formal calling Vader by his proper title. Both of them are being informal and using each other's first names in that conversation.

Supermallet

Yes, good call.