While that show probably caused many a parent to name their child “Buffy” in the years since, it wasn’t exactly a name that inspired anything other than a sort of contemptuous snort back then. Not that I mean to name-shame. That’s just the impression that name gave. Whedon said it was “the name that I could think of that I took the least seriously.” He explained:
“There is no way you could hear the name Buffy and think, ‘This is an important person.’ To juxtapose that with Vampire Slayer, just felt like that kind of thing — a B-movie. But a B-movie that had something more going on. That was my dream. The network begged me to change the title. I was like, ‘You don’t understand. It has to be this. This is what it is.’ To this day, everyone says, ‘Oh, the title kept it from being taken seriously.’ I’m like, ‘Well, f*** them. It’s a B-movie, and if you don’t love B-movies, then I won’t let you play in my clubhouse.'”
It never did strike me as a B-movie name, personally, but that might be because I was around in the ’80s when, if you joked about someone being “a Buffy,” you were talking about a wealthy person who didn’t care about anything but the sweater tied around their neck and the diamond tennis bracelet on their wrist. Fair or not, that was the deal.
I guess it’s understandable that the network didn’t want to take any chances, but her weird name and the fact that she was anything but what that name implied got people’s attention.
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is currently streaming on Hulu.