Even in kindergarten, she told people her name was Skywalker.
Rachael wasn’t a fan of her last name of Gammon, especially because her mother had given it to her more or less on a whim. At first, she chose the name because of the main character in the original Star Wars movies, but it came to represent something larger to her.
“Even more so, it represents this idea about, it doesn’t matter so much where you came from,” Rachael said. “It’s who you are now and what you’re going to do.”
After moving to Alaska, taking a long road trip, getting married spontaneously and coming back to Juneau, she finally was able to get her name legally changed this summer.
Rachael, now 30, met James in classic Juneau fashion. They worked for competing tour companies, courting cruise passengers from their spots in the wooden booths on the dock. James, whose birth name was Jamie, is from Florida while Rachael grew up in various locations in Appalachia. They met in 2015 and grew to be friends.
In 2017, Rachael invited James with her on a long road trip in the Lower 48. He agreed, hopping in her camper van that had Bruce Lee painted on the side.
Just a couple weeks into their trip, the two of them were at a music festival in Joshua Tree called Desert Daze. On a whim — almost on a dare, Rachael said — they got married. They didn’t tell anyone. Their family didn’t know and their friends back in Juneau didn’t know.
They didn’t change their names, though, both wanting to figure out a way to change their names together. Neither of them was too attached to their birth names, and both had ideas in mind. Rachael had been going by Skywalker since childhood, and wanted to include that in her new name.
James had always admired his grandmother, whose birth name was Maxine Gunn, and was especially interested in the name because his grandmother and her sisters had all gotten married lost their last names.
“In order to honor my grandmother’s strong convictions and the amazing bravery it took to leave small-town Illinois and move to the big city of Chicago by herself during the war years,” James said, “I brought up the idea that it would be cool to bring that name Gunn, that ancient Scottish name, back.”
James, currently 35, and Rachael then reached a compromise: they would both take both names. It took about three months to go through the legal process, but James Marcus Skywalker Gunn and Rachael Elizabeth Skywalker Gunn are now their official names.
They still work for competing tour companies, as James is with Juneau Tours/Juneau Whale Watch while Rachael works with Liquid Alaska Tours. They also both remain Star Wars fans, and see similarities between their path and that of Luke Skywalker. Luke’s past and his upbringing are not explained much in the original movies, Rachael pointed out, and it’s all about his present and future instead of his past.
The allure of writing their own story appeals to James and Rachael, they said, and choosing their own name allows them to do that to an extent.
They waved to friends as they walked in the sun on the cruise ship dock Wednesday morning, revisiting the place they met. Rachael said their name change and their whole attitude about living in the present are representative about what they love about living in Juneau.
“In a divided country, and in a country that cares so much about where you come from, really in Juneau, once you’re here, nothing matters about before you were here,” Rachael said. “It’s all about what you’re doing now, and I love that.”
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at 523-2271 or amccarthy@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @akmccarthy.
