Meta: Why Monroe's Name Isn't "Eddie"

2. The character is only referred to as Monroe on the official site, even on the intro video, ‘Meet Monroe’, and also in the episode summaries.

3. In interviews nobody, not even the writers and creators, ever refers to the character as Eddie. Even Mitchell, who you’d think would be most likely to be seeing his character’s name around, only ever calls him Monroe. In fact, he’s on record as explicitly stating that “It’s just ‘Monroe’, just for the record.”  In fact he’s said this a few times: “Somehow the name Eddie Monroe mistakenly got out there and now everyone assumes my character’s name is Eddie Monroe - for the record it’s just Monroe."

So where did the name “Eddie” come from then?

Because his name isn’t mentioned in the first episode at all, it seems likely that a lot of people first saw his name online. And of course, there’s a lot of old, inaccurate information floating around. The early casting calls for the show list his name as Eddie Monroe, including an early draft of the pilot (which calls him “Eddy”, for the record). This of course led to the name being put up on IMDB and Wikipedia, where fans and even people writing articles could find it and proliferate it. Other character names also changed from that draft, so it really does look like “Eddie” is based on old, inaccurate information from early in development of the show. If Eddie is still his first name, why isn't it listed or used anywhere canonically any more like the other characters' full names?

But he still needs a first name, right?

Not really. Even if Eddie or Edward or whatever is his first name, he clearly doesn’t call himself it, or want his friends to call him that, and as such it’s kind of OOC to have him or other people call him that in fic.

I’ve seen the argument come up that it makes more sense for Nick to call him Eddie in a slashy context because “people don’t call their lovers by a last name”. I saw this argument early on in Inception fandom too, where the big ship is Arthur and Eames. But it’s wrong. People call their lovers or friends whatever that person wants to be called. In this situation, Monroe and Nick are on pretty friendly terms at this point. Monroe calls Nick “Nick”. So, if the character wanted to be called by a first name, he would have said so by now.

Logic tells us that he’s already had a chance to do this offscreen.

1. Nick first meets Monroe when he has him done over for suspected kidnapping. The process involved in this would have included Nick seeing Monroe’s I.D or at least his full name as taken by someone else from I.D. So, there is no logical way that Nick does not immediately know Monroe’s full name.

2. Given this, and given that in our culture calling someone by their first name is generally the assumed standard, it can be assumed that Nick probably called Monroe by his given name at some point (especially considering that Monroe calls Nick ‘Nick’, which tells us they are definitely on a first name basis, even if their behaviour didn’t already).

3. And yet Nick still only ever calls him Monroe. So, we can guess that Monroe either told Nick to call him that upfront, or Nick tried his first name at some point and was corrected then.

This further supports the idea that the character clearly, deliberately wants to be called Monroe.

It ALSO assumes that Monroe is in fact his surname and not his first name, which is theoretically just as possible, and that Eddie is even canonically his given name at all still… from what writers etc have said I wouldn’t actually be surprised if Monroe is his first name now.