During his recent appearance on Talk is Jericho, Triple H revealed the name that WWE initially pitched for him when he began with the company. Originally cast in WCW as French aristocrat Jean-Paul Levesque, he said that when he moved to WWF, Vince McMahon was somewhat concerned that the gimmick would make it difficult to turn Triple H babyface at any point in the future.
“Vince liked what I was doing and the character, but he wanted me to be American,” he explained. “I didn’t know what the name was at first, so they brought me to Columbus, to TV, just so I could meet everybody and get to know all the guys a little bit. They had asked me to think up a bunch of names to give some input on it and I had a whole bunch of names in mind…and J.J. (Dillon) called me in the room and said, ‘We’ve got your name. You’re going to be Reginald DuPont Helmsley’ and I was like, ‘Holy cow! Here I am in the bad name category again!'”
He indicated that Dillon could sense his disappointment with the name and agreed to look at the ideas Triple H had compiled in considering a character name.
“I was trying to come up with something that you could make initials out of,” he explained.
After reviewing the list, Dillon sent the suggestions on to the creative staff and contacted Triple H a short time later.
“The next thing I heard, J.J. called me up and said, ‘Hey, we went with a little bit of your suggestions and you’re going to be Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Three H’s.’ and I was like, ‘Okay…I can work with that a little bit.’ So we went with that and then Shawn (Michaels) started calling me ‘Triple H’ from day one.”
