Mark Hamill Says George Lucas Let Actors Decide How They Pronounced Character Names: "He Didn't Really Care"

George Lucas "didn't care" how the names in Star Wars were pronounced and let the cast say them however they wanted.

Mark Hamill, who played Jedi master Luke Skywalker in the space opera series, dropped this factoid Monday (July 11) on Twitter while trying to solve the mystery of how the characters' names in the films are pronounced. 

Hamill, 70, tweeted: "FYI: When we would ask George: 'Is it Chew-bah-ka or Chew-back-a?' / 'Is it Lay-a or Lee-a?' / 'Is it Hahn or Han (as in hand)?'- he would just shrug and didn't really care. He told us it would be pronounced in various ways in different parts of the galaxy.#TrueStory."

Hamill also weighed in on how the AT-AT — which stands 'All Terrain Armoured Transport', the four-legged assault walker first featured in 1980's The Empire Strikes Back  — should be pronounced by reposting a poll from the official Star Wars account. 

He said, "I think it's '@-@', even though I always called them 'walkers'."

Dave Filoni — who has worked on numberous Star Wars projects, including The Clone Wars and The Mandalorian — previously echoed the sentiment.

Speaking at a fan event back in 2020, he explained: "You can say at-at, you can say A-T-A-T, and you can say walker. I’m for all three. That’s canon because in [The Clone Wars] I have imperials say walkers, I have them say at-at, and I have them say A-T-A-T.”

That settles it and we can all move on with our lives. 

— BANG SHOWBIZ

Photo: TPG News/Click Photos