star wars - Why is it called the Millennium Falcon?

I'm particularly interested in how the "Millennium" part pertains to the ship itself. It wouldn't hurt to explain the "Falcon" part either though.

Answer

The Millennium Falcon has a long history, explained on Wookieepedia and I would strongly encourage you to read it here.

The important part on that page is the below quote:

The Second Chance [the Millennium Falcon before it was rechristened] was briefly rechristened the Gone to Pieces during this operation, but when he began flying the ship for the Alliance, he rechristened her the Millennium Falcon, after the bat-falcon

Just to note, in the above quote, Wookieepedia explains that 'he' is Zenn Bien who had stolen it, however this source makes it sound like it was Quip Fargil who rechristened it the Millennium Falcon, but also agrees it was after a 'bat falcon'.

Now a 'bat falcon' was:

a swift species of flying creatures. It inspired the name of the starship Millennium Falcon.

(Source)

That explains the 'falcon' part; as for the 'Millennium' part of the name, I suspect (note that I don't have any evidence for this, but I think it's a reasonable speculation) that it was named so because 'Millennium' sounded futuristic; consider when Star Wars was released - it wasn't too far from the turn of the millennium, but far away enough to make it seem very futuristic. Just my thoughts on this part, but I'll keep on looking to try and find any evidence in this regard.

Comments

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In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

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Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

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