I appreciate your positive view on it, Haarspalter! I like how that little moment made you feel like it gave that Imperial officer a bit more depth than your average officer.
Another thing this made me think of is if Han had a last name before this moment. Han mentions that his father used to build YT freighters, so he wasn’t always an orphan. And Han makes it sound like he ran away from home, if I remember correctly. With that in mind, you would think Han would know what the officer meant when he asked him, “Han… what? Who are your people?” Was Han just being a little melodramatic in that moment, or had he also abandoned his family name when he left home?
I guess my point is that Han must have had a last name he was born with, and he knew about it, but for whatever reason chose not to recognize it. So when the officer suggested ‘Solo’, Han chose to go with that rather than correct him. Han voluntarily abandoning his family name makes more sense to me than there being a lot of single-named orphans running around, otherwise there could potentially be a lot of ‘Solos’ in the galaxy! And it seems like that was the first time the Imperial officer encountered a recruit with no family name, which to me means that other misfits and orphans who come to join the Empire usually, if not always, have a first and last name.
I know I am looking into this too much but I do think it is interesting! It’s fun to look at things in the Star Wars galaxy from an in-universe perspective.