Board Thread:Site-Related Tasks/@comment-764333-20190528162036

I was wondering on whether there is a strict policy of assuming that an alternate version of a character shares his mainstream version's original full name, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

There appears to be a general consensus for it to be so, but there are quite a lot of exceptions, mostly from non-comic media. For example, if the Ancient One (Earth-92131) is clearly based on his mainstream comic version, shouldn't his name be given as Yao much like all others, who also weren't explictly named, but are assumed to mirror the main comic version?

In addition, what about the cases where a full(er) name is revealed for either the main version or the one from a closely related timeline (such as created by Time Travel), shouldn't all alternatives be renamed to follow it? For example, "Hobie" is known to be an informal version of the name "Hobart" in real world, and several versions of Hobie Brown have been referred to as such on page, but not the Earth-616 one. Would it be a safe to assume that he as much legally "Hobart" as a "Dave" is as a "David", or a speculation and original research?

And what of the characters who went by differnt names in both 616 comics and other versions? Is it okay to assume that every Luke Cage was born Carl Lucas and that every version of Aunt May has her original maiden name for as long as the story doesn't say otherwise? 