Why ‘Full House’ Changed Uncle Jesse’s Last Name After the First Season

Jesse Cochran? Jesse Katsopolis? It may be a little confusing to fans of Full House, but the reasoning behind Uncle Jesse’s name change totally makes sense, and was a request from actor John Stamos himself. Here’s why this Full House character changed his last name in the middle of the show’s running.

Uncle Jesse is one of the characters on ‘Full House’ and ‘Fuller House’

To fans, he’s an adorable, elvis-loving, motorcycle-riding musician. To characters, DJ (Candace Cameron), Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin) and Michelle (Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen), Jesse Katsopolis (John Stamos) is their uncle, who often takes care of them alongside their dad and his best friend, Joey.

Although the girls call him Uncle Jesse and Danny and Joey just call him “Jesse,” this character’s last name changed between season 1 and season 2 of the original sitcom Full House. That change was, primarily, due to John Stamos himself, who wanted to better reflect his heritage through the character. 

This character’s name wasn’t always ‘Jesse Katsopolis’

According to Screenrant, “originally, he was Adam Cochran during production, however, the actor didn’t like the first name so it became Jesse as per the actor’s request, so when [the] sitcom debuted on ABC, he was referred to as Jesse Cochran.”

Reportedly, at the request of John Stamos, the character’s name changed again. This time, his last name changed from Cochran to Katsopolis, reflecting the actor’s proud greek-american heritage. This change began at the beginning of season 2 and the character’s last name stayed throughout the run of Full House.

According to DJ Tanner, Jesse had another first name before it was ‘Jesse’

There’s still one other time that the character shared a name change. For one episode during season 5, DJ shared that she called her grandmother and learned that Uncle Jesse’s birth name was actually Hermes, named after a Greek god and Jesse’s great-grandfather. 

When Jesse was younger, he begged her to change his name to Jesse. She did. He’s still somewhat proud of the name Hermes and its origin, even though he never even told Becky his real first name. 

Since then, though, he’s gone on plenty of greek adventures with the rest of the Tanner family. He found out he was engaged to a girl he met back in Greece. He dealt with the loss of his relative. Viewers even met Jesse’s troublemaking cousin, Stavros, who quickly cons the Tanner family out of money.

To watch John Stamos in Full House, fans can head to Hulu, which every episode of the sitcom is available for binge-watching. Episodes of this Netflix original spinoff series, Fuller House, are available on the streaming platform.