What is Columbo's first name?

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This one comes up from time to time as well, and the answer (unlike whether he had a wife or not) is a little harder to pin down.

He's not Philip Columbo

Let's dispense with this one first. The Trivia Encyclopedia had an entry that claimed Columbo's first name was Philip, but that was a copyright trap. Trivia games, and cartographers, sometimes do that...create a unique, fictitious, "fact" that they insert into their content so that if anybody copies it later they can use that unique falsehood to prove copyright infringement in court.

At one time it was said that the Thomas Brothers map guide had a small fake street or label on each and every page for exactly this reason. The fake street would be something inconsequential, a cul-du-sac or alleyway perhaps, so that nobody would be likely to actually try and drive on it in real life. But if it appeared on anybody else's map they'd know it was an illegal copy.

So it was with Philip Columbo - it was a made-up fact used simply to establish if other Trivia guides were copycats.

But is he Frank Columbo?

So here it's trickier. If you ask the show's creators - Richard Levinson and William Link - they would say "No". In fact in the entire run of the series Columbo never says what his first name is, and when asked he almost always responds "Lieutenant". 

His first name never appears in the script anywhere, but it does appear on the screen a couple of times.


The infamous ID. A variation of this ID appeared on screen a couple of times in the series, but usually quite distantly. Here is the first appearance I'm aware of from Dead Weight.


Some people have gotten high-res copies of that and zoomed in...something that wasn't really possible in 1971 when the episode aired. My guess is that an intrepid prop man told to make an ID for Columbo, but given no guidance on the first name, just decided to put "Frank" on there.

In fact, in a couple of images it looks like "Frank" is spelled "Franck". Go figure.

Some more evidence

In Grand Deceptions you see Columbo holding an evidence bag full of "dirt, leaves, and twigs". If you look very closely you can see "Lt. Frank Columbo" written on the bottom line.


Since nobody in 1971 was zooming way in on frames of TV shows to look at such things it probably seemed harmless at the time. Note that at least one of Columbo's ID also says "Sergeant" on it, when we obviously know that he was a Lieutenant for the entire run of the series. Attention to that kind of detail wasn't top of mind at that point in television.

So was it, or wasn't it?

Guess that depends on your point of view. I lean towards going with the writers and creators and say "No." His first name was never officially said, and they deliberately never gave him one. That said, "Frank" does appear on screen, in Falk's hand, so you could argue that validates it.

Ultimately...it doesn't matter.

I prefer to say...

That his first name was "Lou". And his middle name was "Tenant". ;-)

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