This is. Slightly off book for me as it will involve speculation and partial headcanons as well as my usual analysis. So bear with me.
What I would like to muse about is Noah’s name. His first name, specifically. This is entirely focused on Noah and gets a little into his mindset so I’d like to make clear before I start that this isn’t a Noah sympathy post. This is about how/why I think he goes by “Noah” on Earth and nothing deeper than that.
Also. My reasoning pulls a lot from the story of Noah’s Ark and will be laced with some religious discussion. (Though I am an atheist I was raised in a Christian environment, I am approaching the analysis from that angle.) If either of those things, Noah the character or organized religion, is a problem for you, consider this your content warning.
To begin with, several very interesting breadcrumbs are dropped by Noah in the conversation with Max in the cave in 1x13. The first is that Max represents some kind of “savior” figure to the people of their home planet; he is someone of importance. Someone worth coming after. And Noah seems sure that whichever of the factions won the war that the 1947 crash victims were fleeing will be coming.
The second is that Noah heavily insinuates that some, if not all, the divine figures in human religious beliefs are actually aliens. The overall implications of that are many and wide-ranging so I will focus on one takeaway: Noah is very familiar with detailed aspects of human religion. (Specifically the Abrahamic religions as he references “parting the seas” and “striking people down with bolts of lighting”.)
Now before I really get going with those tidbits, a quick refresher here on the story of Noah’s Ark.
God decides that the people inhabiting the Earth are acting contrary to His wishes and have fallen too far into sin to be redeemed, so He will wipe out all life on Earth with a flood. There is one man (Noah) who He considers to be faithfully observant and devout enough to be worthy of saving, so He tells Noah to build an ark to save all the animals and to bring his wife and their three sons (and their families) along to repopulate Earth with humans once the floodwaters have receded.
With all that in mind, backtrack a little with me.
When Noah was finally able to emerge from his pod, he would have needed to build a human life for himself. And he would have had years in which to plan it out. My personal headcanon is that he chose a human name for himself, though it is possible he just killed someone and assumed their identity. (That completely undercuts the premise of this meta though, so we’re gonna ignore that theory.)
So isn’t it fascinating that he chose “Noah”?
Noah, the person who is one of the sole adult survivors of what is essentially a planet-wide shipwreck? Noah, the figure who is responsible for the three (grown) children that are the foundation for an entire race to start over? Noah, the man who does nothing more than follow directions and bide his time while he waits for the danger to pass and a higher authority to tell him it is safe to return?
