That’s Mr. Willy Gilligan to you
Even Bob Denver insisted until he passed in 2005 that the first name of his character was Gilligan. It wasn’t, but that was the way he wanted to see it. Snopes.com lobbies a mixture of fact and fiction on this one. What is more likely is that the original concept was for a character named Willy Gilligan, but it changed as they approach production. This happens all the time with character names. In fact, it happened with Mary Ann. We’ll come back to that.