Thoughts on Claire Farron's Moniker

[skeleton_fingers]

Does anyone else think the explanation for Claire changing her name to Lightning was half-assed?
"I had to be strong for Serah, so I became Lightning.
The game never went into depth about why she really did change it. How does changing your name to that (no matter how cool it sounds) suddenly protect you and your sister from your parent's death? Unless she changed her identity because her parents were killed and their killer was after her. That would be a fine thing to put into the story instead of leaving it blank. When I found out that Claire kept her title for XIII-2 I started to wonder if the developers didn't think about her actual name or it's part of the plot in how she is running from a specific person on Pulse now. Or they could have kept her fake name because players would be used to it from the first game.
Anyway I'm hoping it gives us more background on Lightning's past in the upcoming sequel since she was my favourite character and by the end of the game I still wanted to know more about her. But does anyone else find it kind of suspicious that her name is the same in the sequel?

 

[C i d]

Read Episode 0 and episode i. Just google for them. Episode 0 is the prequel story. One of the chapters gives more info on claire's mother death and how she changes her name. Episode i is the epilogue happening directly after FFXIII ending. It gives a hint as to why everyone thinks lightning is

Spoiler

dead

as seen in the FFXIII-2 E3 trailer.

I think, her name is still called the same because, if you have read episode i, she didn't even have a chance to tell the people that she wants herself to be called Claire again from now on. She just went missing by herself. As for serah, I guess because she was in trouble as the monster attacked her, by reflex, she said out lightning instead of Claire.

Or it could be just a translation error/modification. In the Japanese trailer, serah said "onee-chan, dasukete!" when she was attacked. It means "older sister, help!" she didn't actually say lightning. Lebreau then said 'Lightning', but I guess it's because she doesn't even know lightning's real name since she was not too close to her.

 

[One-Winged Moogle]

It's clear that Claire Fallon wanted to be a new person. She didn't want to be Claire Fallon anymore; because it was just her and Serah, she had to be someone stronger. In her quest for strength to protect herself and her dear sister, she evidently figured shedding her former name to something more powerful would cement this shift.

The sentence really is the only explanation needed; the rest can be found through deduction. She needed strength, so she became someone new, with a name to jump start things.