No Full Name Given / Live-Action TV

• The Addams Family:
  • In the series, Fester is Morticia's uncle, but it's unknown whether he's on her father's side (which would make his last name "Frump") or her mother's (surname unknown). In the movies, he's Morticia's brother-in-law instead, making his last name "Addams".
  • Grandmama's name isn't revealed, though her last name is Addams, and in The New Addams Family, her first name is Eudora.
  • Lurch's mother's name is "Mother Lurch", meaning that "Lurch" is probably his surname. (It is not unusual for butlers to be known only by their surnames.) Neither his nor his mother's first names are revealed.
• According to Jim: All but one of the cast members are only referred to by their first names. Dana gets married and adopts her husband's surname, but her original surname is never revealed.
• Becker: Linda and Bob's last names were never revealed.
• Best of Friends (1963): We don't get to find out Charles, Hylda, or Sheena's last names. As they share the first names of their actors (Charles Hawtrey, Hylda Baker, and Sheena Marshe) it could be assumed that they also share their surnames. Uncle Sidney's surname is also unknown, but presumably would be the same as Charles'.
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • We never learned Penny's surname. Eagle-eyed viewers did spot a parcel addressed to a "Penny Teller" in her room as a Freeze-Frame Bonus in one episode (season 2, episode 18, "The Work Song Nanocluster"). She became Penny Hofstadter after marrying Leonard, and was referred to as this on a few occasions (including the Grand Finale) but her maiden name was never said. The fact that the full names (including middle names) of all the other major characters were known made this stand out more.
  • Howard's mother was always referred to as Mrs. Wolowitz, at least until the eighth season when Stuart calls her Debbie.
• On many reality shows, one example being Billy the Exterminator, last names aren't given, even the ones of the people the show is about.
• We don't get to find out the last names of Elizabeth and Samantha, the leading ladies of Birds on the Wing.
• The Brady Bunch:
  • Alice, for the first 1½ years of the show. None of the writers had apparently even thought to give the Bradys' beloved housekeeper a last name until the mid-Season 2 episode "The Tattletale" ... and that was only because John Wheeler, the actor that played a mailman in this episode, pointed it out to Lloyd Schwartz when he was reading the script. From that time on, Alice's last name was "Nelson."
  • At about the same time, occasional character Sam was also given a last name ... "Franklin." To this day, there are Brady Bunch fans who believe that Alice's last name was Brady and that Sam was simply "Sam 'da Butcher."
• Breaking Bad: Victor of the Los Pollos Hermanos Cartel. While not a terribly important character to the series, it's somewhat notable that he alone, alongside his coworkers like Mike Ehrmantraut, Gale Boetticher, and his partner/eventual replacement Tyrus Kitt, doesn't have a surname mentioned at any point in the series, nor so far in the spinoff Better Call Saul.
• The Brittas Empire: Angie (Brittas' secretary in the first series) is only referred to by her first name during her time on the show.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Angel's original given name was Liam, but his surname has never been revealed.
  • Faith's surname, Lehane, was not revealed in canon until The Role-Playing Game was released, after the TV shows ended. The lack of a surname subtextually places her among the show's supernatural entities and villains, most of whom have Only One Name.
  • While we know that Spike's real name is "William", only after the shows ended did Joss Whedon reveal his last name is "Pratt".
  • None of the Potential Slayers introduced in the final season are given a last name, not even Kennedy.
• Bugs: Ed, despite being one of the three leads, has no specified surname. (The other two leads are Nick Beckett and Ros Henderson.)
• Charles from Charles in Charge has no last name.
• Charley's Grants: We don't get to find out Lord Charley, Miss Manger, or Waterbrain's first names.
• Columbo:
  • A minor running gag is that Lt. Columbo never reveals his first name on the show, and everyone either uses his last name or just calls him Lieutenant. In an early episode, he shows an ID badge that gives his first name as Frank, but series creators Levinson and Link have specified that wasn't intended to be his canon name. They just filled the ID with placeholder text that wasn't supposed to be legible to the audience, and never anticipated that home video and higher-resolution screens would make that text legible years later. Some sources have given his first name as Philip, but this turned out to be a copyright trap set by a trivia book.
  • Columbo's wife likewise has never had a given name confirmed by the creators.
• Despite appearing in every episode of Coppers End, we don't know Chief Superintendent Ripper's first name.
• CSI: NY: "Mac" Taylor's real first name has not been revealed. Gary Sinise has said his name is McCanna (after Gary's son, who was himself named after one of Gary's brothers-in-law), but they've never said it onscreen.
• We don't get to discover Vivienne's last name at any point in The Culture Vultures.
• Mason on Dead Like Me has Only One Name, which could either be a first or last name. He might have just made it up, though, considering the fact he says a lot of things about his background that are nonsense.
• Doctor Who:
  • The original televised series never revealed the surnames of the Doctor's companions Vicki, Polly, Mel, and Ace. (Polly, Mel, and Ace did have surnames in the production documents that never made it onto the screen but were subsequently used in the Expanded Universe.)
  • UNIT stalwart Sergeant Benton was never referred to except as "Sergeant Benton" or "Benton". (In his first appearance he was "Corporal Benton".) The Fifth Doctor, long after the UNIT era, still referred to him as "Sergeant Benton" even after mentioning all of his other old UNIT pals by first and last name, and despite having also worked with Benton after he promoted to Warrant Officer. Fandom says his first name is John, probably derived from the name of the actor playing him (John Levene), but the name has only been used in expanded universe books and videos.
  • "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks": All of the locals who are named (Solomon, Frank, Tallulah, Laszlo, Diagoras) are only referred to with one name each.
  • "Planet of the Dead": Of the bus passengers, only Angela Whittaker and Lady Christina de Souza give their last names. Carmen, Lou, Nathan and Barclay are only known by one name, as is minor character DI McMillan.
• Don't Look Deeper: All the characters are only called by their first names, while last names aren't revealed.
• Entourage: Ari Gold's wife has no first name. She is simply referred to as Mrs. Ari (not even Mrs. Gold), despite more and more screentime each season. Her name was eventually revealed in a throwaway remark in an episode of the final season.
• Everybody Hates Chris: Chris and his family (Julius, Rochelle, etc.) never have their surname mentioned. Although it is often assumed to be "Rock" as the series is semi-autobiographical based on Chris Rock's high-school years, the show nevertheless goes to great lengths to never mention it.
• Father Ted: Not revealing Mrs. Doyle's first name became a Running Gag. At one point, she said it three times, but was drowned out by a convenient noise each time. An early scene cut for time but included in the scripts book revealed it as Joan, which the scriptwriters regretted.
• Fellow Travelers: Miss Addison's given name is never mentioned.
• Foreign Affairs (1966): We don't get to know Taplow or Miss Jessup's first names or Irinka's surname.
• Friends:
  • Gunther was only ever known by his first name. In one episode, after Chandler drunkenly declares them best friends, Gunther asks if Chandler even knows his last name. The best Chandler can come up with is "Centralperk?" (the name of the coffee shop where Gunther works).
  • In one episode, Rachel can't remember the surname of her last boyfriend, Tag, after pretending it had been a "deep and meaningful relationship". She therefore says that he had only one name, like Moses. His last name was actually "Jones".
• Get Smart:
  • The Chief, who could only reveal his first name (Thaddeus) as a matter of national security.
  • Agent Larabee.
• Gilligan's Island:
  • The title character during its run. After the show was cancelled, Word of God revealed that his first name was Willy.
  • Mrs. Howell was called Lovey but this was a nickname. Her real first name, Eunice, was mentioned in only one episode.
• Grimm: Monroe. It's unclear whether he's going by a first or last name, as his parents are just addressed as 'Bart' and 'Alice'. The fact that he calls himself 'Monroe' indicates it's probably a first name, though.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • Wendy the Waitress' last name is never given. Made even funnier when it's revealed she married one of Marshall's coworkers, who is only known by his last name "Meeker".
  • In Season 8, Carl the Bartender is deeply offended to learn that Marshall does not know his last name despite having been a regular patron his entire adult life.
  • Of Ted's major girlfriends (Victoria, Robin, Stella, Zoey and Jeanette) before the mother, Victoria is the only one whose last name is never revealed.
• We don't get to know Quick, Foster, or Froggett's first names in If It Moves, File It.
• On Impractical Jokers, some of the Jokers' recurring fictional characters have only one known name, notably small-time mobster Santiago and the ever-elusive LAAAARRRYYYYY!!!!
• Inside Porton Down, a BBC documentary about the research centre Porton Down, one of the most secret sites in Britain (think Area 51, but exponentially creepier). The site director was the only person interviewed whose surname was shown, and it is possible that "Alan", "Marcus" and "Cerys" were not those people's real names.
• In for a Penny: We don't get to find out Dan or Ali's surnames or Councillor Bundy's first name.
• Inspector Morse:
  • Until the third-last episode, Morse was only ever referred to by his rank and/or surname. The source novels provided only an initial, E. Name eventually revealed as 'Endeavour'.
  • Max the coroner never had a surname in the the original show, but acquired one when the character returned in the spin-off Endeavour.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): Season 1 characters that the screenwriters haven't assigned full names to include Rashid, Doris, Fenwick, Matthias, Carol, Lily, Carlo, Damek, Claudia, Charlie, Bardeen, Bruce, Habersham, and Magnus.
• In It's Awfully Bad for Your Eyes, Darling..., Dominic's surname is never given.
• Jeeves and Wooster: Jeeves is universally known simply by his last name. It isn't until the final episode that we hear someone address him as "Reggie", presumably for Reginald, although this had already been explicitly stated in the original P.G. Wodehouse story 'Much Obliged, Jeeves'.
• Kids Incorporated: Almost no one on this show has a last name, sometimes awkwardly so, such as in "The Hero" where Devyn is introduced on an interview show by her first name, with an audible pause because the interviewer's rhythm was thrown off by the lack of a last name. On several occasions, particularly in dream sequences, a character will give an obviously fake last name (Ryan Lambert once uses "Ryan Ryan", and once "Ryan von Ryan"). Since most characters were The Danza, it may be implicit that they have the same surnames as their actors — though this wouldn't work for, say, Renee Sands and Stacy Ferguson, whose characters were siblings.
• LazyTown: None of the main characters are given a last name aside from Robbie Rotten, Mayor Mumford Meanswell, and Mrs. Busybody.
• Leverage - while the other members of the team have full names given (although at least in Sophie's case, not accurate full names) we do not know if Parker is the character's first, last, or nickname.
• Little House on the Prairie: Initially, Albert, when the Ingalls, Olesens and Garveys meet the street urchin in Mankato during the Season 5 season-opening story arc. This is averted when Charles eventually learns Albert is a runaway and had quit using the last name he was christened by, Quinn.
• On TV and in the radio, The Lone Ranger was this trope. We know his last name was Reid, like his brother and great grand-nephew The Green Hornet, but we never learn his first name in those versions. It is given as 'John' in later media.
• In MacGyver (1985), the titular character has an Embarrassing First Name, and for several seasons was only known by his surname. Eventually it was revealed to be Angus, but still didn't come into common usage by his friends, and wasn't used by his grandfather, who had reared him.
• Malcolm in the Middle: The last name of Malcolm's family is never revealed apart from an Orphaned Reference in the first episode where Francis' name tag said Wilkerson as their name was originally supposed to be. This is lampshaded twice in the series finale when Malcolm is introduced as valedictorian, his last name is covered up by a microphone screech, and his brother Francis has an ID badge that reads "Francis Nolastname".
• Man in a Suitcase featured an ex-CIA man turned Private Eye who was known only as McGill. Supposedly his first name was John, but it was never used onscreen.
• M*A*S*H:
  • BJ Hunnicutt's full name is never revealed. After Hawkeye spends an entire episode trying to figure it out, BJ claims he was named after his mother Bea and his father Jay, but it's unclear if he means it or is just kidding.
  • Radar's real name (Walter) wasn't revealed until episode 81 ("Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?") in season 4, even though it appears in the very first sentence of the original novel.
  • Sparky's last name (Pryor) is mentioned once, in Season 1. His first name is never mentioned at all.
• Mr. Bean: The title character is never given a first name, perhaps because it is heavily implied by the opening credits that he is an alien. The spin-off book Mr. Bean's Diary contains an old school report of his, but his first name is obscured by an ink blot on the page. However, his passport shows his first name to be 'Mr' (in the first movie) or 'Rowan', the actor's name (in Mr. Bean's Holiday).
• Mr. Lucky:
  • Mr. Lucky's first name never revealed.
  • Also his sidekick Andamo — it's not even specified whether "Andamo" is his first or last name.
• The Nanny: Niles, the butler, who even puts a Lampshade Hanging on this at one point:
  Fran: Say, what is your last name?
  Niles: It's just Niles. Like Cher.
• New Girl: Schmidt, until the 6th season when it is revealed that his first name is Winston—the same as his roommate's.
• Newhart: The last name of the brothers Larry, Daryl & Daryl is never revealed.
• On NewsRadio, Beth's last name is never stated. At one point, she claims not to have one.
• In Nichols, everyone always calls Nichols by his surname. His first name (Frank) is only know because it is briefly seen on his army induction papers in the first episode.
• Nikita: Many if not most series regulars start out this way. The title character stays with no last name until roughly the middle of season 2, when a TV reporter reveals it as Meers. Michael, Amanda, and Percy have no last name through the season 2 finale.
• No Appointment Necessary (1977): We don't get to find out Sandra or Mervyn's last names, nor Colonel Marshall's first name.
• Naomi (2022): Dee, Zumbado, Nathan, Annabelle, Jacob, Anthony and Lourdes all don't get their last names revealed.
• On the House: We never get to find out Walter, Stanley, or Derek's last names.
• Person of Interest: The names of the two main characters are aliases. It has been confirmed that their first names are really "John" and "Harold", but their real surnames remain unknown.
• Power Rangers:
  • It is common for Rangers to be known only by first names, and some Rangers' last names are only known by Word of God in the form of network websites (that are often wrong about things like last names, ages, and dates when we finally do get them; network and toy-company sites often work with first-draft information).
  • Of the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, we didn't get "Zack Taylor" and "Trini Kwan" until the day of their departure, and had heard "Jason Lee Scott" once before. Tommy Oliver and Kimberly Hart, the first last names we get, are heard a mere 54 episodes into the original series! And again, though his tenure lasted 202 episodes, we never heard Billy's. Last names weren't deliberately avoided, just... if nobody had a good reason to speak it (martial arts tournament, TV appearance, etc.) it didn't get spoken.
  • Power Rangers Megaforce: Rangers Troy, Noah, Jake, Gia and Emma.
  • Power Rangers Samurai goes the extra mile: over half a decade after the end of the series, half of the team^note at least before Lauren shows up never had their surnames revealed, those being Kevin, Mike and Emily.
  • Power Rangers Mystic Force: Sisters Madison and Vida.
• The Pretender:
  • Jarod, the protagonist, adopts a new fake surname every week. Furthermore, he was abducted as a child and doesn't know his real surname himself. The first season finale reveals the first names of his birth family (parents Charles and Margaret and siblings Emily and Kyle) but not their surname. By the end of the third season, most of which he spends tracing his birth father's past movements, Jarod must know his surname, but by then the series has committed to the bit and it's never revealed to the audience.
  • Sydney, the man who raised Jarod. The audience never learns his surname (nor, by extension, that of his brother Jacob). The third-season episode "Parole" has an awkward bit of dialog where he needs to introduce himself to a stranger he's not on first-name terms with but the writers need to avoid committing to a surname.
  • Other less major recurring characters whose surnames are never revealed include Sydney's colleagues Brigitte, Sam, and Willie, and Jarod's fellow test-subject Angelo.
  • Conversely, the Defrosting Ice Queen Miss Parker's first name is never revealed, and neither is that of her father. When his wedding is shown in the final season, there's a blatant Unreveal during the exchange of vows.
  • Miss Parker's Butt-Monkey underling Broots never gets a first name, even after he becomes a supporting character who's in pretty much every episode.
  • Mr. Lyle is an interesting case, as that's an alias he adopted, and he may not even have a first name. (Even his business cards say only "Mr. Lyle", and nothing else.) One episode does reveal his full childhood name, but he would probably argue that that's not his name any more, if it ever really was.
• Pushing Daisies: If Ned has a last name, we haven't yet learned it. The narrator, who often refers to characters by their full names, calls him "young Ned" in the flashbacks and "the pie maker" in the present. The series also avoids giving the full names of Ned's parents and siblings.
• Quincy, M.E.: The title character is called one of four things: "Quincy", "Dr. Quincy", "Doctor" or "Quince" - while one episode has a shot of his business card showing his first name begins with the letter R, said name is never used. Not even by his girlfriends. Not even by the officiating pastor in "Quincy's Wedding, Part 2" when the main man takes a new bride!
• Revolution: The following non-exhaustive list of characters in season 1 have only one name given: Jimmy, Billings ("Clue"), Cutrone ("The Love Boat"), Fletcher ("Chained Heat"), Graves ("The Longest Day"), McCoy, Reed ("The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia"), Ryan, Simpson ("Ghosts"), Templeton ("Pilot"), Nicholas, Albert ("No Quarter"), Ashley ("Kashmir"), Rose ("Ties That Bind"), Rosie ("The Song Remains the Same"), Sam, Trevor (two characters with that name), McCready ("The Longest Day"), Drexel ("Sex and Drugs"), Audrey ("The Children's Crusade"), Beth, Boggs, Brian, Caleb, Carl, Davis, Duane ("Home"), George, Jack, Jacob, Lily, Michael, Peter, Rob ("Soul Train"), Rudy ("The Plague Dogs"), Sean, Skip, Sonia, Spencer, Steve (two characters with that name), and Vidal. Most of them are minor one-shot characters, but a couple of them are recurring characters.
• We don't get to find out Mr. Powell, Happy, or Mr. Salisbury's first names at all during Room at the Bottom (1967)'s eight-episode run.
• Seinfeld:
  • For a long time Kramer was this, until the episode revealing his first name is Cosmo.
  • Newman's first name is never mentioned at all, even on his business card. A one-shot character refers to him as "Norman", but Word of God is that this was meant to be a mistake on the part of the character (i.e., mishearing Newman's name, and believing it to be "Norman"), not a revelation of the character's actual first name.
• Sesame Street:
  • Characters with unknown first names include Mr. Handford, the late Mr. Hooper, Doc Martin, Mrs. Sparklenose, and Mr., Mr., Miss, and Miss Noodle.
  • Characters with unknown last names include Zoe, Julia (and by extention her parents and brother Samuel), Lily, Rudy, Linda, Alan, Frazzle, and Oscar and his siblings.
• Sharpe: Harris is never given a first name. This is given a Lampshade Hanging in Sharpe's Waterloo — Hagman, who has served with him for years and presumably knows him very well, asks "So what is your first name?"
• Simon And The Witch: Simon and Sally's surnames are never revealed.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • We never learn Jadzia Dax's pre-joining surname (by contrast, we know that Ezri was Ezri Tigan; for that matter, we meet Ezri's mother and brothers but never any of Jadzia's family, despite her being in six seasons of the show to Ezri's one). In the Extended Universe she is given the pre-joining name Jadzia Idaris.
  • We never learn Gul Dukat's first and middle names, beyond the fact that they start with "S" and "G" (then again, the use of "Dukat, S.G." could indicate some sort of rank or position like "station gul" and not his first and middle initials). This is odd for such a prominent character, you'd think Damar at least would be allowed to use it. In the novel "A Stitch in Time" his name is finally given as "Skrain G. Dukat."
  • Leeta's surname is unspoken, even in her Wedding Episode. And in "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" her jersey reads "Leeta" rather than her surname.
• Star Trek: The Original Series:
  • Sulu's first name was not given in the original series, eventually being revealed in the 6th movie. The name Hikaru actually came from one of the first published novels, The Entropy Effect.
  • Likewise, Uhura's first name (Nyota) wasn't revealed until Star Trek (2009).
• Star Trek: Voyager: Tom and B'Elanna's daughter was only born in the finale, so we never learn her name. In the alternate future, her name ends up being "Miral", but not everything shown in alternate futures comes true. We do know, however, that her surname is "Paris", since that's her dad's surname.
• Teen Wolf:
  • "Stiles" Stilinski's first name isn't revealed for most of the series, and is only said to be embarrassing and very hard to pronounce. Even his dad calls him Stiles, apparently at his own request. The final season reveals that it is "Mieczysław".
  • Stiles' dad was this as well; his first name "Noah" was never revealed until the final season, and he was referred to as Sheriff Stilinski.
• Most of the main cast of Trailer Park Boys only go by their first names, and their last names are never mentioned. This becomes rather jarring when Julian gets his real estate license and the certificate just says, "Julian".
• The Train Now Standing...: We don't get to find out Rosie or George's last names, nor Mr. Potts or Mr. Pitts' first names.
• The surnames of Lilian and Madge from The Trouble With You Lilian were never revealed.
• Tru Calling: Davis.
  Tru: I don't even know if Davis is your first or last name.
  Davis: Middle.
• Rose from Two and a Half Men never had her last name revealed. We also never learned Berta's last name nor Judith's maiden name.
• Two Up, Two Down: We don't get to find out any of the last names of the four leads (Jimmy, Flo, Stan, and Sheila).
• You're Only Young Twice (1971): Aside from Armitage, none of the Twilight Lodge residents (Peter, Mark, Reg, Guilio, Mr. Freestone, and Ambrose) or staff (Corrinna and Benny) have their full names given.
• Zero (2021): The forenames of Anna's parents are never revealed.
• The eponymous host of Ziwe bleeps out all mentions of her real-life last name, Fumudoh, on the show. As far as she'd have the show's fans believe, she doesn't even have a last name.

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