Meaninful Rename / Live-Action TV

• Skye takes her birth name, Daisy Johnson, during Season 3 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. This is not only in honor of her father, but also reflects her newfound role as leader of the Secret Warriors.
• In Babylon 5, the Narn are known by one name when they are pouchlings. When they reach maturity and pick which of their race's holy men they wish to follow, they pick their true name based on that. As an example, there's G'Kar, who follows G'Quon.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003) plays with this trope when Secretary of Education Laura Roslin succeeds to the position of President of the Twelve Colonies. The pilot of the ship on which she's travelling announces on the radio: "Gemenon Liner 1701, this is Colonial Heavy 798.... No, strike that. This is Colonial One." ^{see also}  the similar example in Air Force One
• Bones: Happened in Brennan's Back Story. Her current name (Temperance) reflects her overly logical and reserved nature. Meanwhile, her birth name (Joy) is quite the opposite. Indeed, she turned to science and logic in order to keep herself from getting hurt after being abandoned by first her parents and then her brother. Though it was her parents who renamed her, as a matter of hiding their identities. The family got name changes that didn't align quite so poetically with their circumstances.
  • Angela's father turns out to be a Giver of Lame Names, so she also renamed herself from Pookie Noodlin to Angela Pearly Gates Montenegro. While this is at least a less embarrassing name, the "Pearly Gates" at least has some significance, as it's the name Billy Gibbons gave to his guitar, and he plays her in-universe father, who may or may not be an expy of himself or merely himself or... you know what? It's complicated. In-universe, the name came to her in a dream.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Giles took on the name 'Ripper' in his teen and early adulthood years. In the episode "Band Candy" the fact that he's going by it again is a clue to what's going on.
  • Spike takes on his new moniker after being turned into a vampire, renouncing his original name William.
  • Angel was originally named "Liam," becoming "Angelus" as an evil vampire. He became simply "Angel" when he had his soul restored.
  • Anya went through a similar transition, from the human Aud to the demon Anyanka and then back to human, calling herself Anya.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Doctor" is a name chosen by the Doctor himself that carries responsibilities. In "The Beast Below", he states that after committing an act that would break his own moral code, he would have to find a new name. In "The Name of the Doctor", we learn that he actually did do this for an entire incarnation. Much later, in "Face the Raven", the Doctor threatens to renounce his name as he prepares to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge when his companion faces being Killed Off for Real.
  • "The Waters of Mars": The Tenth Doctor, in a moment of uncharacteristic hubris, gives himself the short-lived name "The Time Lord Victorious". Despite lasting all of four minutes, it is a profound character moment.
  • Jack Harkness becomes a meaningful rename after Jack finally meets the man he initially took the name from.
  • Companion Amy Pond was named Amelia Pond and began to call herself Amy when she decided to grow up, because the Doctor had said "Amelia Pond is a fairy tale name". And even though she keeps her birth name when married, later the Doctor calls her "Williams".
  • Melody Pond takes on the name River Song when she becomes touched by the Doctor's devotion to a person of the same name and then discovers it's herself. Doubles as a Stable Time Loop.
    • This occurred because her mother was given a charm made by someone whose native tongue had only one word for a body of water: "river"; and "melody" was turned into "song". Additionally, because the first and last names were stitched on both sides of a piece of cloth that comprised the item, this made it easy for someone who doesn't know that name to read the last name as first and vice versa.
  • "Closing Time": Craig Owen's baby prefers to be known as Stormaggeddon, Dark Lord of All. (The Doctor calls him 'Stormy' for short.) By the end of the episode, the baby agrees to go by his given name, Alfie, showing his acceptance of Craig as his father.
  • Kate Stewart, daughter of The Brigadier, dropped "Lethbridge" from her name when she joined UNIT, in an attempt to avoid association with her father, which she thought would have gotten her special treatment.
  • The Master changes their name to the Mistress (Missy for short) for logistical reasons after he undergoes a Gender Bender regeneration.
• The Expanse:
  • The surviving crew of the Canterbury end up in the possession of a Martian frigate, the MCRN Tachi (a tachi is a type of traditional Japanese sword). When they receive instructions on how to modify the ship's transponder, they ask Holden to pick a new name. He decides on Rocinante, meaning "workhorse" in Spanish. It's also the name of the horse of Don Quixote, who's best known for attacking windmills, claiming that they were monsters, which seems like a good description for James Holden (his mother told Chrisjen that her son wanted to be a knight when he was a boy). In season 3, they once again modify the transponder and ask a new crewmember, a botanist, to pick a name. He goes with Pinus Contorta, a type of pine that can survive almost anywhere. As a testament to the new name, the Contorta then goes ahead and defeats a UNN battleship.
  • When Fred Johnson's people hijack the LDSS Nauvoo, the generation ship they were building for the Mormons, they later have to retrieve the ship in order to turn it into a battleship. As such, they rechristen her OPAS Behemoth (she's the largest ship ever built).
• Friends has Phoebe go down to change her name to incorporate her husband's surname. On discovering she can change her name to anything she wants, she chooses Princess Consuela Bananahammock. She only changes it back when her husband changes his name to Crap Bag,
• Game of Thrones: The final episode of Season 6 suggests that Jon Snow was born under another name given to him by his mother, Lyanna Stark, which Ned changed to "Jon". The name "Jon" could have come from any number of namesakes as it is both a Stark family name and the name of Ned's foster father, Jon Arryn. Ned may have changed the name Lyanna gave Jon because it was too Targaryen-sounding. In a 2002 "So Spake Martin" Q&A, GRRM states Ned named Jon.
  • That episode also has Daenerys refer to the area around the Free Cities where her plotlines have been for much of the series as "the Bay of Dragons". She changed the name from Slaver's Bay after she abolished slavery in much of the region.
• Girls5eva: Played for laughs. Between the first and eighth episodes rapper Lil Stinker rebranded himself Stinker because he's ready to take on more mature material.
• A later episode of Have Gun – Will Travel revealed that this is why the main character calls himself Paladin.
• Sylar in Heroes names himself after a brand of watch, since his power is understanding how things work, just like the clockwork he used to fix.
• In Legends of Tomorrow, we learn that when new members join the Time Masters, they pick new names for themselves in order to protect themselves from any foe who might wish to attack their past self. For example, Rip Hunter's birth name was Michael (we aren't told his last name). This also explains the weirdness of some of these names.
• In Lost, James Ford calls himself Sawyer to remind himself of the man who turned Sawyer's father into a Murder-Suicide.
• In Once Upon a Time:
  • The dwarf Dreamy takes the name Grumpy after giving up the fairy he loves and resigning himself to a life in the mines. This is an interesting case in that dwarves are actually assigned names that fit their personalities (specifically by appearing on the pick axes they use). After that incident, his pick axe breaks and he wis forced to take a new one, with a new (more appropriate) name.
  • Rumpelstiltskin's father Malcolm sheds his name when he also sheds his age to become the eternally youthful Peter Pan.
  • Killian Jones adopts the nickname Captain Hook after he gets his hand chopped off.
• Perpetual Grace LTD: Newleaf changed his name after getting out of prison because he wanted to "turn over a new leaf" in his life. In a fit of depression, he considers changing it again to "Spacejunk."
• Princess Silver: Fu Chou's real name is Wu Chou. His assumed name^note 傅筹, fù chóu sounds like "fùchóu"^note 复仇, meaning "revenge".
• In Profit, the main antihero changes his name from James Stakowski to Jim Profit after running away from his abusive father and reinventing himself as a Machiavellian corporate shark.
• In a Quantum Leap episode, Sam leaps into a Yankee soldier during The American Civil War, who gets trapped behind the enemy lines in a Southern farm. Eventually, he ends up escaping, along with the widow who lives there and her slave. Naturally, the soldier is revealed to have married the widow later. However, the biggest shocker comes when the now-freed slave, after an encouraging speech by Sam, decides to choose a last name for himself. Since a free man is his own master, he calls himself "King". Al immediately tells Sam that this guy is the ancestor of Martin Luther King, Jr.
• In Raising Hope, the titular baby was originally named Princess Beyonce by her mother. When Jimmy decides to keep her instead of putting her up for adoption, he changes her name to Hope, tying the name to the title and its wordplay, as he hopes that raising Hope will be something that will give his direction-less life focus.
• Played with on The Red Green Show. Lodgemember Moose Thompson writes a letter telling how he intends to get a meaningful rename. "I think the nickname Moose Thompson is demeaning. It makes fun of my unusual size and implies that I'm dumb. Therefore I am changing my name. From this point forward I will be known as Moose Johnson."
• In both adaptations of Roots, Mandinka warrior Kunta Kinte is kidnapped and sold to British slave traders that transport him from his home in West Africa across the Atlantic Ocean, where he is bought by a Virginia tobacco plantation owner. Not knowing what to call him, the master's wife tells her husband that his newest purchase should be named Toby. After Kunta vehemently makes it clear that his name is not Toby, he's tied to a post and flogged until he acknowledges his name is now Toby. After one foot is severed following a failed escape attempt, he accepts that he'll never go back home, see his family ever again, that he'll be a slave for the rest of his life, and no longer cares that his master calls him Toby.
• In Season 4 of Schitt's Creek Johnny Rose renames The Schitt's Creek Motel to The Rosebud Motel in order to honor and solidify his partnership with co-owner Stevie Budd. It feels like an adoption and from this point forward, Johnny and the rest of the Roses treat Stevie like family.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Similar to the Star Trek IV example, in the penultimate episode, "The Dogs of War", the replacement for the USS Defiant, the São Paolo, is renamed the Defiant in the first ship's honor.
  • Among the Trill race, when a symbiont is implanted in a host, their names are merged. Thus Ezri Dax is the Trill named Ezri Tigan carrying the symbiont Dax. The symbionts are very long-lived, resulting in a line of hosts all sharing its name.
• Star Trek: Discovery: After the reunification of Vulcans and Romulans, the planet Vulcan has been renamed Ni'Var to symbolize a union of two cultures. In Real Life, the term "Ni var" was coined in The '60s by Dorothy Jones to mean "two forms".
• Star Trek: Picard: In the season 3 finale, the starship Titan is re-christened the Enterprise-G, making her the franchise's latest Legacy Character.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Healer", the small-time crook Jackie Thompson begins calling himself "Brother John" after setting himself up as a Fake Faith Healer using the healing stone that he stole from a museum. After he realizes that it is wrong to use the stone for a selfish purpose, he begins calling himself simply John.
• In the TV show of The Worst Witch (but not the books), Miss Drill is a mortal woman. When she drinks a potion to gain witch powers, she renames herself 'Hilary Hemlock'.
• Christian Miller was originally the name of The Young and the Restless star Victor Newman. After leaving the orphanage when he is first introduced, he changes his name to reflect his status as a victorious new man.
• Robin of Sherwood:
  • In his first scene in the show, Will Scarlet tells how his wife was raped and murdered by mercenaries. He ends his tale by saying "My name was Will Scathlock. It's Scarlet now." Given that oftentimes in Robin Hood adaptations Will Scarlet is a very cheerful character, and the name "Scarlet", if it has any meaning at all, refers to the fancy clothing he wears, it's a great way of establishing that this show's version of the character is considerably Darker and Edgier.
  • As Robert of Huntingdon accepts his position as The Chosen One in the third season's first story "Herne's Son", and is given new clothes more appropriate for that role by the people of Wickham, Edward, the thain of the village, addresses him as Robert of Huntingdon when wishing him luck. Robert replies to it by saying "That life is over." and Edward corrects himself "Of Sherwood, then." After the following story, "Power of Albion" Robert starts going by Robin Hood and the outlaws who actually knew the original Robin start calling him that. Robert's father still calls him by his given name, but he's practically the only one.
• The Wire:
  • Stringer learns about rebranding in his college course, follows the example of World Com, and strategically changes the name of the drugs periodically to create a sense of novelty and fake competition. Subverted in that it only takes him so far, the customers are not that stupid and a dope fiend can wise up.
    Bodie: Same shit, new name.
  • When he makes up his mind to finally go straight, Cutty decides to go by his given name, Dennis.