Talkin' About...'Star Wars': Did the fact that 'vader' means 'father' in Dutch give any clues to the identity of Darth Vader when Star Wars was originally released in 1977?

(C) 1977 20th Century Fox Film Corporation and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

Did the fact that "vader" means "father" in Dutch give any clues to the identity of Darth Vader when Star Wars was originally released in 1977?

According to George Lucas’s post-1999 revisionist history of how he created the Star Wars saga, the story was always going to be about the conflict between Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader and his twin offspring, Luke and Leia. In every interview or audio commentary track related to the Star Wars movies - especially the prequels - that was the Gospel According to George.

That’s the “official version” in 2018.

But just because that’s what Lucas said between 1999 and 2012 doesn’t mean it’s true.

According to most authoritative accounts of the genesis of the original Star Wars trilogy (the saga’s Holiest of Holies, as it were), Lucas originally thought of “Darth Vader” as a supporting character and not as The Star Wars’ Big Bad. That role was reserved for a villain called Kane. This original version of Vader did not remotely resemble the black-armored Sith Lord with the skull-like breath mask and Nazi-inspired helmet. The 1973 era Vader 1.0 was just a General who was there as background, mostly.

As the script evolved (all screenplays undergo rewrites. I ought to know; I’ve co-written one) and Lucas played around with different combinations of characters and their places in the story, Darth Vader morphed from background character to the film’s supporting villain. And as his prominence grew, his look changed.

I’m not going to get into the complete history of Darth Vader’s evolution as a character, nor am I going to give you (as another Quora member did) an in-universe explanation of the name Darth Vader. (That particular approach doesn’t really answer the question, either,)

I will reiterate what others have said in their real-world, backed-up-by-facts answers.

1. When George Lucas wrote the original Star Wars film between 1973 and 1976, “Darth Vader” and Luke Skywalker’s yet-to-be-named father were not the same person.
2. Although Lucas was educated enough about linguistics (he had once wanted to study anthropology) and understood that Darth Vader sounds like “dark father” in several Germanic languages - including Dutch - he simply picked the name because it was phonetically interesting.
3. The idea of blending Vader and the still-unnamed “Luke’s father” into one character did not come about until The Empire Strikes Back’s screenplay was being re-written by George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan after Leigh Brackett, who was dying from cancer, turned in her first draft - which itself was based on a story treatment by Lucas. (The Star Wars Trilogy: The Annotated Screenplays, an officially sanctioned reference book written by Laurent Bouzerau and published by Del Rey Books in 1998, contains the complete scripts of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, along with notes on the scripts’ evolution and direct quotations from various individuals involved in the production of the films.)

In short, no. “Darth Vader” was not a name originally intended to foreshadow the big reveal that Anakin Skywalker had turned to the Dark Side and become a Dark Lord of the Sith. It just ended up working out that way.