FWIW, storyboard artist Alex Tavoularis designated his sketches of female Luke as “Luke”, without a name change.
That’s interesting. I just googled it and found this storyboard with a female Luke and according to the person who posted it its supposed to be from the 2nd draft. Makes me wonder if there exists a draft “2B” or something to that effect where its essentially the same script but with a female Luke.
It’s possible. There was something similar with the rough draft: a revised rough draft or “version 1A” where Lucas just went through and changed all the character names and some of the planet landscape descriptions to see if he found ones he liked better.
I like to think that this 2B draft existed at some point during McQuarrie’s involvement. The female Luke was the Starkiller’s only daughter and thus would meet a little extra adversity on her journey. It was quite an idea for Lucas to have at that time, especially since I still think he would have kept the love story between her and Han rather subtle. I suspect he didn’t keep with it because he thought the film in this state would be a hard sell.
The second draft does make the most sense of all the development drafts with a female Luke, if you ask me.