Spock's Christian Names.

TV To tonight's Pointless Celebrities which has now become the tea time tv fixture on a Saturday night now that we're into a run of new episodes. This was a FA Cup Special so of course had a question board about ears which included the following clue which popped up during dessert:



"Wait? What? Surname? He doesn't have a surname..." I said as I spluttered over one the final mince pies we have in the mouth, almost chocking on a current. "He's just Spock? Isn't he? Unless it's trick question and they mean his human mother's name ... her first name's Amanda ..."

Cue five minutes of jabbering as a lapsed Trekker with a memory like a one of the grills in Kirk's cabin tries to remember the surname of Amanda's mother thinking that Pointless had taken a turn for the rock hard and even as Richard's suggesting that it's one of the easiest answers on the board.

Of course the answer they give is Spock which just led to more jabbering.

"Spock, how can it be Spock?  His name's just Spock.  It's not Spock Spock."  And then went and tweeted as much which is what you do in 2015, it's communal, which led to a couple of replies to the effect that it's unpronounceable and that someone thought he was called "Mister" on the basis that it's what Kirk called him in times of high drama.

Cue research, or rather Googling "Spock's first name"

The Wikipedia has nothing.

The Official Star Trek site says "Full Name: Spock (lineal Vulcan name unpronounceable)" which doesn't make much sense in this context since the "lineal" name is the surname and we can all prononce Spock.

Who in the what now?

Doctor Who fans have it easy. We have the TARDIS Datacore for out trivia needs which pulls everything together in one place thanks to the BBC insisting that such things as canonicity are fans business.

Thanks to Star Trek's interesting approach to these things, there are three fancyclopedia entries for the character. Crumbs.

Memory Alpha's entry on Spock Prime (in other words Nimoy) has "full name generally considered unpronounceable to Humans" and "Jane Wyatt, who played Spock's mother Amanda Grayson, was once asked by fans at a convention what Spock's first name was. She replied, perhaps jokingly: "Harold."" ("Grayson! Thank you!")

Memory Alpha's entry on Spock (alternate reality) (Quinto) has "full name generally considered unpronounceable to Humans".

Incidentally the unpronounceable business is from the episode "This Side of Paradise". It's from this line of dialogue:

LEILA: And this is for my good? Do you mind if I say I still love you? You never told me if you had another name, Mister Spock.
SPOCK: (wiping away her tears) You couldn't pronounce it.

The assumption I suppose is that since he's "Mr Spock" "Commander Spock" and "Captain Spock" in the parlance of Starfleet then Spock must be his surname. So when Leia, sorry, Leila says "another name" here she means first name. Fair enough. But what is it?

Step forward Memory Beta. Memory Beta is the fancyclopedia which deals with Trek's spin-offs, it's version of the expanded universe in Star Wars or what who fans think of as "the stuff we read or listen to when it's not on television". That tells us Spock's name is:

S'chn T'gai Spock

Revealed in Barbara Hamley's classic TOS novel Ishmael about an amneasiac Spock finding himself in the old west. The "fact" section of the entry makes it sound deliciously good:

"The novel has Spock interact with the leading characters from Here Come the Brides along with many other characters from franchises outside of Star Trek, including the Cartwright family (Bonanza), Hokas (Earthman's Burden), a "scruffy-looking spice smuggler" (Star Wars), Viper pilots (Battlestar Galactica), both the Second Doctor and the Fourth Doctor (Doctor Who), one of the gamblers from Maverick, and Paladin (Have Gun–Will Travel)."

Confusingly, Memory Beta has a link back to Memory Alpha which itself has an entry for the novel with a longer synopsis including the nuggest about his first name and more specificity on the Who references:

"The British science-fiction television series Doctor Who is referenced at least four times: the Fourth Doctor is described on page 13, Metebelis crystals (from "The Green Death" and "Planet of the Spiders") are mentioned on page 57, the Second Doctor is described on page 154, and Kirk recalls legends of a planet of stagnant time-travelers (meaning the Doctor's people, the Time Lords) in the Kasterborous galaxy on page 200."

Doctor Who itself has an entry on Memory Alpha. And Memory Beta. I may have strayed off topic.

The point is, Pointless Celebrities is quite right. Spock is his surname. His first names are S'chn T'gai which are indeed unpronounceable.