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of COURSE we have to start with adam!! he’s pretty damn unique in that he’s had no less than THREE last names over the course of the franchise— radford in the original screenplay, faulkner in the first movie (as confirmed by producers, but never spoken or seen within the movies), then retroactively changed to stanheight in one of the hoffman movies. faulkner-stanheight has since been adopted as adam’s canon last name, both by the fandom and (at least somewhat) by the powers that be; in the 2014 tenth anniversary q&a panel, leigh whannell’s name card listed him as playing adam faulkner-stanheight.

so, the breakdown goes:

adam- first man, “man from the red earth.” of course, it’s hard to ignore the biblical connotations of this name— we’ll see a lot of biblical names here, so i would assume that we’re MEANT to make those connections. in adam’s case, he literally IS the first man we meet in the saw franchise, and his life and death have far-reaching consequences for most every other main character in the franchise. it’s also fitting that leigh, the progenitor of the series, would name his self-insert adam.

radford- an alternate spelling of redford, which simply means “ford of the red river.” a lot of characters in the hoffman movies have these sorts of geological names, but it’s slightly less common in the amanda trilogy. a ford is a place to safely cross a body of water, somewhat akin to a bridge. the red earth/red river connection is interesting, too. much has been made of james wan’s love for the color red and the way it’s used in his movies, and we see that in saw, as well— the movies are overwhelmingly blue and green, which only makes the red of the apprentices’ cloaks, billy’s eyes, and all the blood stand out more. afaik, nobody’s ever said why adam’s name was changed from radford to faulkner, so i guess we’ll never know!

faulkner- this is literally just the old english word for “falconer,” someone who trains and uses falcons to hunt. adam loves animals, so it’s nice to see that reflected somewhat in his name. additionally, you could view this as a reflection of his job and his attitude— as a photographer, he keeps himself at a distance and observes or scouts from afar, instead of getting right up in the middle of things, similar to how a falconer would use their bird to assist them with hunting.

stanheight- presumably, this name was added in the later movies because the last name faulkner had been forgotten about— which makes sense, given that we never SEE the name faulkner anywhere in the movie. stanheight is another geographic name, meaning “stone heights.” shocking! this name gives me the same sort of distant, watch-from-afar vibes that faulkner does, and i think the two complement each other in a really interesting way.

next up is the gordon family, starting with my beloved lawrence <3

he’s an interesting (but not TOTALLY unique) case of a saw character who owes his name, at least partially, to another franchise. but we’ll get into that momentarily!

lawrence means “shining one” and originates from the roman city of laurentium, known for its laurel trees. the romans are also the ones who popularized using laurel wreaths as a symbol of status or exaltation! all very fitting for a high and mighty doctor like lawrence. the “shining one” epithet can apply in multiple ways— lawrence is the lightbringer of the first movie in that he has control over the light switch, but you can also read that as him becoming john kramer’s best/favorite apprentice. lawrence’s name ALSO serves as a nice reflection of diana’s, but we’ll get into that later as well. for a more christian/biblical read on his name, there IS a saint lawrence, who was also active in ancient rome. he was martyred by being pressed over a hot gridiron, and is considered the patron saint of cooks, comedians, butchers, archives/libraries, deacons, and the poor. patron saint of butchers is pretty raw, given lawrence’s eventual apprentice status, but i don’t think any of saint lawrence’s other correspondences apply to our lawrence quite so easily/obviously.

gordon is a scottish surname, meaning “fortress.” he’s a very reserved, guarded individual, so that perfectly fits him— but in lawrence’s case, the name gordon has another origin, too! leigh whannell is famously a wes craven enthusiast, and in craven’s a nightmare on elm street part 3: dream warriors, we’re introduced to a new character in... doctor neil gordon. now, leigh has never (to my knowledge) confirmed that lawrence’s last name was lifted from this movie/character, but i don’t think it’s a HUGE leap to make that assumption, given that both characters are doctors and whannell is such an avowed craven stan.

moving right along through the gordon family, we’ve got alison:

alison is a norman french/germanic name meaning “of a noble kind.” clearly, this has a lot of thematic resonance with lawrence’s name meaning, and as we’ll find out in a moment, with diana’s as well. what a well-named family!

(we aren’t going to get into kerry and rigg in this post, but since kerry shares her first name with alison, obviously this applies to her too. why both kerry and rigg share their first names with other established characters, i’ll never know.)

rounding out the gordon family, we have diana!!

those of you who are familiar with roman mythology, have read rick riordan, and/or have taken a middle school social studies class in the united states might remember that diana is the name of the roman goddess of the moon, closely analogous with the greek goddess artemis. literally, the name diana means “divine” or “godesslike,” which you might expect from the origin. diana’s name combines the nobility of alison’s with the roman influence of lawrence’s! god i’ll never get over the gordon family etymology. great stuff.

we’ll next move onto the kramer family— john, jill, and gideon. we’ll look at amanda here, as well.

john is an anglicization of the hebrew name yohanan, meaning “graced by god.” i would hardly call john kramer’s life graced, considering just about every bad thing that you can imagine happens to him over the course of it, but alas! one could make the argument that this could refer to john taking on the role of a judge, baptist, and/or “re-creator” to his test subjects and apprentices— deciding that he has been “graced” from above with the authority to do that. and indeed, the bible does feature a john the baptist, said to have performed jesus’ baptism. many people who look at the saw franchise in biblical terms see john as the god figure of the series, which is the reading i usually take, as well.

kramer, meanwhile, finds its origin in both high and low german, and referred to traveling merchants. nowadays, the name is mostly interpreted to mean “merchant”or “peddler.” you could connect this to the wide array of businesses that john has owned or been involved with, or the idea that that he’s “selling” his philosophy!

jill is most commonly understood to be latin in origin and means “youthful.” she certainly is much younger than john, and you could draw parallels between her name and her relationship to/with amanda!

tuck, variously given as norman, english, or scottish, apparently has its roots in WAY early norse. this website gives tuck’s origin as a shortened form of the name “thorketill,” which references the norse god thor and “ketill,” the word for a cauldron. there’s some connection to be made between jill’s medical career and a cauldron as an object you could associate with making medicine, i suppose. but in all likelihood, jill was given the last name tuck because tuck is also the surname of leigh whannell’s wife. which frankly is no less baffling to me, but he did what he had to do i suppose!

no picture for gideon, sadly, but his name is also hebrew in origin, and comes from Gidon, referring to a great warrior. more literal interpretations find gideon can mean “hewer” or “he with a stump for a hand,” but i doubt this name was chosen with those interpretations in mind.

i started working on this post on a mandy monday.... and here she is ❤️

amanda means “lovable” or “worthy of love.” given that so much of amanda’s character arc centers around her desire to find someone who will show her love and compassion, this is both a very fitting name and an absolutely HEARTBREAKING one. amanda also shares with lawrence the distinction of being named after a nightmare on elm street character— in her case, amanda krueger, ALSO introduced in the third elm street movie. amanda k was a nun who was captured and assaulted by disturbed, violent prison/asylum inmates, leading to the birth of freddy krueger and amanda’s subsequent death by suicide. that idea of innocence being taken advantage of and birthing great evil as a result is something we see played out in amanda young’s arc, too.

in the original screenplay for the first movie, amanda was given the last name “denlon,” which of course was later given to lynn and jeff. so we’ll save that for those two!

as for her surname... well. it’s young. we all know what that means. we often conflate the idea of youth with concepts of naivety, innocence, or being childlike, and these are all ideas that we see reflected in amanda’s arc throughout her trilogy.

before we move onto characters introduced in the later movies, we’ll take a minute to look at some stragglers from the first movie who don’t show up again.

first up we have zep, a character who goes almost COMICALLY unremembered and undiscussed, given his role in the first movie and the entire series’ theme song using his name.

zep is a nickname, of course, and likely refers to the floor cleaning agent of the same name, given that zep was a hospital orderly.

his real name is shepard, as in “person who guards and watches over sheep.” this ties in nicely with his hospital job, and it also serves him ironically, as his “guardianship” over alison and diana is anything but. the bible is also rife with allegories about shepherds and sheep, so you could draw the connection between zep being a proto-pseudo-apprentice to john and him being a shepherd for john’s message.

hindle is an english compound name, and when you translate those component parts, you get “valley of the hind,” a hind being a female deer. this also has a peaceful, pastoral sound to it, which both reinforces zep’s job description and ironically contrasts his true disposition and attitude.

ah, good old david tapp, who (i believe) has the honor of being the saw character who’s been in the most video games!

david is yet another hebrew name, meaning “beloved.” king david, the second king of israel, is a very important figure in both judaism and christianity.

tapp, while not a conventional or common last name, sounds an awful lot like tapping a phone, doesn’t it? i think both tapp and sing’s last names were chosen to call to mind ideas of surveillance, detective work, and other “police procedural” associations. tapp DOES have an old english root, where it was used to refer to a tall or thin person... but this was a nickname based on a tap, as in the object you use to get sap out of a tree. so one way or another, tapp’s last name is VERY literal.

steven has its origins in greek, where it means “crown,” “reward,” or “high honor.” christianity also has a saint stephen, who wikipedia tells me was killed by being stoned to death and is widely considered the first martyr of the christian church. perhaps fittingly, sing is the first onscreen death of a major character in the franchise— while we see victims die before sing in the first movie, we never get to know them. sing is the first character we have a chance to get attached to, only to see him killed for it.

sing, much like tapp, has a police connotation to it— to get someone to confess a crime, or to snitch on their coconspirators, is to “make them sing.” in english, the name sing has a pretty obvious/literal meaning, but in a ton of south asian and southeast asian languages/cultures, the names sing, singh, and variations thereupon appear. all these names share a common origin in a sanskrit word meaning “lion,” in the connotation of a hero.