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When Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) first appeared on Star Trek: Voyager in season 4, she would lose more than just her ties to the Borg. In the show’s fourth season DVD extras, executive producer Brannon Braga said (via Screenrant) that the writers had originally intended to give Seven a human name, possibly as a way for her to better reintegrate into humanity. And although the name she used before her assimilation was revealed, she never chose to use that name on Voyager.

As it turns out, it was decided that keeping Seven of Nine’s designation was to set her apart from the crew, and that was necessary considering she had spent most of her life with the Borg. She had no real knowledge of her humanity, so it made sense that she would go with the only name she knew.

“We fought for a long time. At first we gave her a human name. She was going to be called Pera or Annika or something like that. We wrote the first few scripts with a human name. And only a little later did we think: ‘She shouldn’t have a human name. She should stand out somehow.'”

– Brannon Braga

And although Seven had already reintegrated into the human world by the time she met Admiral Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: Picard, she still chose to use her Borg name. This was a point of contention between her and Captain Shaw when she served as his second-in-command aboard the USS Titan. He called her Commander Hansen rather than Seven of Nine, but this was mainly due to the trauma he had suffered at the hands of the Borg. It was only when he was dying aboard the Titan that he recognized Seven for the person she really was.

It was a poignant moment when he gave her command of the ship and named her Seven of Nine. In truth, Captain Shaw had known who she was all along, but in his final moments of life, he gave her the recognition she sought from him. And that was just one of the reasons why letting her keep her Borg designation was the best decision.