Baby Yoda Has a Name. And I Hate It.

I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.

Toby Keith

On this week’s episode of The Mandalorian, Mando and his son, Baby Yoda, finally met with Ahsoka Tano. She’s the jedi that Mando’s been looking for to train Baby Yoda. Now obviously, Disney was never going to let Mando leave Baby Yoda with her because then they would lose about 99% of their viewership, but they did something else almost equally divisive. Ahsoka Tano used the force or something nerdy to communicate with Baby Yoda and revealed his real name to Daddy Mando.

His name is Grogu.

A few years ago I was hanging out with a girl and thought maybe we had a good shot of starting up a relationship together. I really liked her. The day I was going to tell her how I felt, I got a text from her. She started talking about how she was going to meet up with a guy that night and blah blah blah. Apparently they’d been hooking up for a while. Even on days when we’d hung out. That experience ranks just below finding out Baby Yoda’s name on the list of things I wish I had never learned.

Grogu is not a cute name. Of all the made up names they could’ve come up with, they had to stick the cutest being God ever created with a name that sounds like a noise a heroin addict might make when they’re OD’ing and trying to get all the puke out of their throat.

This is a hate crime. Whoever came up with this name needs to be punished. No wait, nevermind. I don’t want to incite a Jar Jar Binks-level riot. Star Wars fans are actually insane. I don’t even like Star Wars that much but I like the spinoffs, especially The Mandalorian. Because of Baby Yoda of course.

And that’s how I’ll always refer to him. Just like I never called him “The Child”, I will never call him Grogu no matter how cute he looks when he hears that name.

I honestly didn’t even know his name was a mystery. I figured Mando would get to name him through some ancient Mandalorian tradition. It would’ve made more sense to me. Now Baby Yoda sounds like an old man trapped in a baby body. I get that he’s 50 years old but still, he’s a baby. I really don’t think he’d be able to communicate all that he did to Ahsoka Tano like he did. It was just weird.

This is just like when I found out who was behind the Gossip Girl blog at the end of Gossip Girl. I was mostly surprised that I was supposed to be trying to figure out who it was this whole time. And then I was surprised because the reveal was so terrible. Just like the reveal of Baby Yoda’s real name.

It’s not a huge deal (he says as he dedicates an entire blog post to the subject), I just wish it didn’t happy. Maybe Mando will get to rename him or maybe we’ll rarely hear the name again just like how we rarely hear Mando’s real name.

-Jeston

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