What was the original name of the character Indiana Jones before being renamed?

Before being renamed Indiana Jones, the character was originally called Indiana Smith. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg designed Jones as a modern version of the bold archaeologists and treasure hunters featured in 1930s film serials and pulp magazines. Early development materials used the surname Smith, but Spielberg disliked it and Lucas suggested Jones as an alternative.

The name “Indiana” was retained. It came from an Alaskan Malamute owned by Lucas in the 1970s, and the dog also helped inspire the name and appearance of Chewbacca in Star Wars. The character’s formal name is Henry Walton Jones Jr.; “Indiana” is a nickname rather than his birth name.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade makes the joke explicit when Henry Jones Sr. explains that the family named the dog Indiana. This creates another common mix-up: Indiana is not Jones’s first name, and the character was not originally called Henry Jones. “Indiana Smith” refers specifically to the character’s early development name before Spielberg and Lucas settled on Jones.