The Names of the Millennium Falcon

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No, not aliases under which the fantasy spaceship is purported to have flown. But simply and quite literally the names inscribed on the models. 

32" Falcon: Charles Bailey

It’s fairly well known that the 32" stunt model of the Millennium Falcon, built for the Empire Strikes Back in 1978-79, has the names of the builders and other crew inscribed on it. Too tiny to be seen on-screen, of course, but quite easy to see in person, and there for all posterity. In fact, I don't know if it's publicly known who wrote the names, and whether it was done before or after filming.

32" Falcon: Ease Owyeung, written in Chinese

What’s less known is that the original 5 foot model, built for Star Wars in 1976-77, also carries a bunch of names. Much classier-looking printed names. But the bigger model was so huge that the lettering is extra tiny and hard to see.

Five foot Falcon: Paul Huston

Additionally, the 5 footer names are on the underside of the model. And, when it's displayed today the Falcon is usually mounted on a short post that holds the ship at a rakish angle. This means that enthusiast photos, taken at public exhibitions, rarely show the underside in great detail simply because it's only viewable by the public quite obliquely. Accordingly most of the detailed information we have on the names come from black and white reference photos, taken around 1978 or so.

Five foot Falcon: Joe Johnston

The 5 foot names were stylish lowercase printed letters - possibly Letraset rub-down dry transfers since the baseline level and spacing are a bit uneven. I don’t know the specific typeface used, but it was a fairly wide and rounded one.  By contrast the 32" names were written by hand, perhaps somewhat hastily as they're quite scrawled. They're all in uppercase letters, and written in extremely fine black pen.

32" Falcon: Michael Fulmer

Some look like they've been scratched, as though someone tried to remove them, such as Michael Fulmer here. Another was definitely deliberately scratched off the history books - Mary Lind's name was scraped off at some point, since there's damage to the paintwork where her name used to be. I feel like I'm examining an ancient Egyptian carving, looking for evidence of an earlier pharaoh who was wiped out by a successor. Or an ancient Greek ostracon.

Five foot Falcon: Mary Lind in 1978; the model as it looks today

Lucasfilm have allegedly not permitted decals to be made of the names. Replicating these letters on a small-scale model is pretty pointless, as they’d have to be microscopically tiny. It’d be possible to replicate the 32" names on the large De Agostini model of course. But either way it’d be an exercise for the obsessive completist to put it mildly. Still, out of historical interest, here are the names I know of. They’re written here in the case (upper or lower) used on the original model.

Five foot Falcon: believed to be Dave Beasley.

Here's a diagram of the upper and lower sides of the 32" Falcon, created by Lee Stringer. It shows the location of the known names on the stunt model.

Finally, this is a publicly-editable spreadsheet. Please update and correct if you have any additional information.

I just ask that you be respectful and not add spurious data to the spreadsheet, or else I'll have to lock it down!

Five foot Falcon: David Grell