Here's Why Wolverine Is Called Logan
Wolverine is the only superhero to have a movie titled after his real name, 2017's "Logan," which we at /Film named the best "X-Men" movie. Somehow, I don't expect we'll ever be getting a Superman movie called "Clark" or a Batman film titled "Bruce." Wolverine's past is shrouded in mystery though; even he doesn't remember most of it. Is "Logan" even his real name? Yes — but it's complicated.
Wolverine was introduced without much context in 1974's "Incredible Hulk" #180 (by Len Wein and Herb Trimpe) when the Hulk makes his way to Canada and tangles with the local hero. Nothing was said about Wolverine's life outside his yellow costume, or if he even had one. When Wein was tasked with rebooting the X-Men in 1975, he reused Wolverine as part of the new line-up; since his introduction was so vague, it was easy to rewrite Wolverine into a mutant. Still, Wolverine remained mysterious, and as Wein soon departed, writer Chris Claremont slowly filled in the blanks.
It was 10 issues before Claremont even suggested Wolverine had any interior life; in "X-Men" #103, a leprechaun (bear with me) calls him "Mr. Logan" and Wolverine questions how the imp could know his real name. His teammates don't learn his name is Logan until "Uncanny X-Men" #139, when Wolverine visits his old friend Heather Hudson. To put this in perspective, this is after "The Dark Phoenix Saga," Claremont's most famous "X-Men" story and the first climax of his run on the title. Nightcrawler, Wolverine's best mutant friend, asks why he never told them his name is "Logan." Wolverine responds, "You didn't ask."
Claremont picked the name from Mount Logan in Canada, telling Back Issue magazine that he wanted to be ironic by naming short king Wolverine after his homeland's highest peak.
Where did Logan come from?
So that's how the writers puppeteering Wolverine arrived at his name being Logan. But where did that name come from in-universe? Since Wolverine couldn't remember his own past and was implied to be much older than he looked, it could've been an alias that stuck. Barry Windsor-Smith's 1991 "Weapon X" mini-series cleared up how Logan got his adamantium claws, but shed little light on who he was before.
That answer only came in 2001, a year after Hugh Jackman's Wolverine debuted on the silver screen in 2000's "X-Men." A six-issue mini-series simply titled "Origin" (plotted by Bill Jemas, Paul Jenkins, and Joe Quesada, drawn by Andy Kubert) finally gave Wolverine a backstory carved in stone.
"Origin" begins in Alberta during the late 1800s, at an estate owned by the wealthy Howlett family. The story first focuses on three children living there: sickly heir James Howlett, his friend Rose O'Hara, and Dog Logan. Dog is the son of the Howletts' groundskeeper, Thomas Logan, a bad-tempered lush who disapproves of his son interacting with their upper-class bosses. Dog is obviously the young Wolverine, right? He's got the right name, the anti-authority attitude, the short fuse, and his father is the spitting image of Wolverine, down to the pointed black hair and mutton chops.
Nope!
Wolverine's origin story in the X-Men comics and films
In "Origin" #2, Thomas Logan breaks into the Howlett estate and kills family patriarch John Howlett. Young James, enraged and horrified, sprouts claws from his knuckles and kills Logan Sr. His mother/John's wife Elizabeth, terrified by the events and her son, takes her own life. Old Man Howlett (John's father/James' grandfather), wanting to hush up the incident, gives Rose enough money to make her way and orders her to take the cationic James far away, never to return.
Rose starts calling him "Logan" to hide where they came from. Since James' new healing factor blocks out traumatic memories, he's none the wiser about his real identity once he comes to. Unbeknownst to Rose, this name is more fitting than she realizes — Thomas Logan is James' real father.
Logan and Elizabeth had carried out a long affair, having two sons whom she passed off as her husband's; James, and his older pre-deceased brother John Jr. (From the scars on Elizabeth's torso, it's implied John had the same mutation as his little brother and was killed for it.) Thomas hated the Howletts not just because of their wealth, but because of his jealous heart.
So, while Logan isn't Wolverine's birth name, it is his family name. During Grant Morrison and Chris Bacchalo's "Assault on Weapon Plus" arc in "New X-Men," Wolverine discovers the files Weapon X kept on him, which list his name as "James Logan." This was published shortly after "Origin," so either there was a miscommunication, or Morrison agreed that Wolverine is a Logan by birthright.
Logan isn't the end of Wolverine
The identity of Wolverine (and Dog Logan as a red herring) was supposed to be a twist in "Origin." Issue #2 ends with a full panel page of James screaming as his claws drip blood, shocking readers that this little runt is now on track to become the hard-edged killer they know as Wolverine. Like Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker's father in "Star Wars," this isn't much of a twist these days — especially for comic readers of my generation, who were introduced to "X-Men" after Wolverine's history was revealed.
Wikipedia lists Wolverine's real name as "James Howlett," spoiling any surprise if you read that before "Origin." The reviled "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" also loosely adapted "Origin" in its first five minutes — though it skips right to the part where James unsheathes his claws and kills Thomas Logan, without any of the comic's build-up. The movie also combines Dog with Wolverine's arch-enemy, Victor Creed/Sabretooth, which is honestly some nifty streamlining. (Although it does raise the question: why is Sabretooth's name "Creed" if his father's was "Logan"?)
In the 2005 comic "House of M" (by Brian Michael Bendis and Olivier Coipel), after the Scarlet Witch tangles up and straightens out reality, Wolverine regains all of his lost memories, and the mystery of Logan is officially put to bed. In the 2010 arc "Wolverine Goes To Hell" (by Jason Aaron and Renato Guedes), the final unfriendly face Logan meets in the underworld is his father, who tells Wolverine he's proud of him for making "Logan" a name to be feared.
Marvel Comics
Wolverine rejects his approval, but Thomas promises they'll be seeing each other again soon enough. The conflict in Wolverine's heart has always been between man and beast — who would've thought that his human name was the one that carried his berserker spirit?