Star Trek Icon Helped Name His Famous Character
While even the biggest franchise fans don’t stop to think about it very often, one of the coolest parts of Star Trek is the iconic names of our favorite characters. The name “James T. Kirk” sounds like it belongs to a man of action, just like “Spock” is a perfectly simple name for a perfectly complex character. While Gene Roddenberry was responsible for naming most of those early Trek characters, it turns out that James Doohan was personally responsible for naming Scotty “Montgomery Scott” as a tribute to his grandfather.
James Doohan Named Scotty
For casual fans, or perhaps just those who haven’t watched much of The Original Series, the full name of this character might come as a surprise. “Scotty” is actually a nickname for the character who otherwise has a full name like everyone else not named Spock or Uhura (whose full name was not uttered onscreen until the 2009 Star Trek reboot). James Doohan helped give “Scotty” a proper name, and he did so because he wanted to honor James Montgomery, his maternal grandfather.
Amazingly, Doohan Is Not Scottish
At this point, you probably have a pretty obvious question: if James Doohan wanted to honor a man named “James Montgomery,” then where did the Scotty part come from? When the actor first read lines for The Original Series episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” his chief engineer character didn’t even have a name. Doohan is great at accents (if you don’t already know, the actor is from Canada, not Scotland), and he read lines with a variety of different accents, including Italian and German.
Paying Tribute To Family
You’ve probably figured this out, but one of the accents he tried was Scottish, and that’s the one that stuck. The final accent was the actor’s choice, and he used this particular voice because the Scottish are world-renowned engineers. Therefore, while James Doohan’s character was nicknamed “Scotty,” Montgomery Scott’s full name simultaneously paid tribute to the actor’s grandfather (a name shared by James Montgomery Doohan) and the character’s Scottish origin.
Spock And Montomgery Scott
Next time you watch an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, you should pay attention to who doesn’t call James Doohan’s character “Scotty.” This nickname was used by almost all of his fellow crew except for the Vulcan Spock, who invariably referred to the engineer by his proper name, Montgomery Scott. It’s a really great character detail for the alien, showcasing both his unfamiliarity with human nicknames and his formal bearing amid the highly emotional crew.
Doohan Helped Shape Early Star Trek
In addition to James Doohan’s Scottish accent helping create Scotty’s real name, his skill at accents also shaped Star Trek history in other ways. For example, he created the first words of the Klingon language (this was back before Marc Okrand greatly expanded the language of Trek’s most famous race). Doohan also helped to develop the Vulcan language…not bad for an actor that Gene Roddenberry originally tried to get fired after Star Trek’s second pilot episode.
A Behind The Scenes Miracle Worker
Learning more about how James Doohan shaped Scotty and other iconic parts of the franchise is a great reminder of how indispensable he truly was. Like Captain Kirk, Gene Roddenberry was the steady commander of the world’s most influential science fiction series in those early days. But Doohan should get full credit for fleshing out this strange new world, serving as a “miracle worker” on and off the screen.
