I wish we'd gotten the full story of Gortash's name change. When it happened, why he picked that particular name, why he kept his first name but not his last, etc.
I imagine a large part of the why was to both distance himself from his parents—no love lost there after what they did to him and how they'd squandered the money they'd gotten from sacrificing him—and from his poor beginnings. He wants to be something and somebody in Baldur's Gate. The patriars are never going to give him the respect he wants if he's just Enver Flymm, the upstart cobbler's son with delusions of grandeur who keeps trying to weasel into the circles of his betters.
But why Gortash? He liked the sound of it? It means something in Faerûn languages (I know what it means in the real world)? Why not both names? Why not reinvent himself entirely? Does he like his first name?
I know that Gortash is the name used by Nubaldin and is on the documents in the House of Hope, but I'm not entirely convinced that's a 100% "in the game world" thing and not a "for us, the players" thing. I can't see him being like "I'm not Flymm anymore, I'm Gortash" to Raphael, the devil who just bought him and threw him in his dungeon and torments him and lets his servants abuse him, and Raphael being like "yes, all right, Gortash it is."
A case could be made that something similar did happen and then Raphael, Nubaldin, and everybody else used the name mockingly to further torment him. But I can't then imagine Gortash finally escaping the House of Hope and being fine with using a name that will bring up memories of a decade? two decades? worth of suffering every time he hears it. If Karlach tells Gortash she's going to make him suffer, even with his emotion-nullifying coat he immediately reacts very strongly and negatively, which to me suggests that he's not even a little bit over it and does not want to be reminded of it. (I also think that's a small part of why he has the coat.)
I'm inclined to think the use of the name Gortash is for the players' benefit. Because if it's your first run and you don't go to the cobblers before doing the House of Hope, you'd have no idea Flymm was Gortash and it'd probably seem weird that some kid named Flymm keeps getting mentioned in a devil's house.
I know it doesn't *really* matter in the long run. But the tidbits of information we get about his past just make me want to know more. (And analyzing and dissecting everything we do know helps me when trying to write him in fics.) This man, and his relationship with Durge, is just too interesting for the like 15 minutes of screentime we get in the game. I want to know everything! 😭
It made sense to get rid of his last name Flymm ofc, since he hated his parents. And his chosen last name "Gortash" sounds harsh, which is the image he wants to project publicly.
The first name, "Enver", however - I can't even think about anyone who would have actually used it, pre-hells, during the House of Hope or after it. I imagine his parents just cussed at him calling him "little POS" or something... and later he was just a slave, so it probably wasn't used that much either. Nubaldin refers to him by last name, too.
So, I think the full name fits him nicely since it's a contrast: Enver sounds smooth, like honey - Gortash sounds harsh.
My headcanon is that his first name "Enver" was used so seldomly that he just chose to keep it. There was no trauma connected to it. The first name is private and intimate and he had no real concept of that - and he didn't even want to waste his precious time with useless things like that 😁
