Marvin The Paranoid Android - Name

Name

According to Douglas Adams, "Marvin came from Andrew Marshall. He's another comedy writer, and he's exactly like that." (Indeed, in an early draft of Hitchhiker's, the robot was called Marshall. It was changed to "Marvin" partly to avoid causing offence, but also because it was pointed out to Adams that on radio the name would sound like "Martial", which would have undesirable connotations.) However, Adams also admitted that Marvin is part of a long line of literary depressives, such as A. A. Milne's Eeyore or Jacques in Shakespeare's As You Like It, and even owes something to Adams's own periods of depression.

Marvin does not actually display signs of paranoia, though Zaphod refers to him as "the Paranoid Android." Nor does he show any signs of mania, though Ford refers to him as a "maniacally depressed robot." He remains consistently morose throughout. In fact, he exhibits remarkable stoicism, being willing to wait hundreds of billions of years for his employers.