One of the most consistent aspects of Star Wars fandom is the inability of fans to agree on anything, especially arbitrary details and inconsequential matters. In the case of the AT-ATs, the Empire’s distinctive ambulatory tanks, exactly how their designation should be spoken has been argued ever since the term’s introduction in text form.
First introduced in The Empire Strikes Back in its opening action sequence of the Battle of Hoth, they’re generally referred to as ‘walkers’ or ‘Imperial walkers,’ with AT-AT being an acronym for ‘all-terrain armored transport.’ Some people are of the opinion that the abbreviation should be spoken as two short words, while others believe that each letter should be spoken as if being spelled out. It doesn’t help that in various canonical media, the vehicles have been referred to both ways, mostly due to actors reading the term how they themselves think it should be said, like when characters in Arrow pronounced Ra’s al Ghul as either ‘Raaz’ or ‘Raish’ depending on who was speaking the name.
The only real official word on the matter came when Dave Filoni, the showrunner of The Clone Wars, Rebels and Resistance, weighed in and said:
“You can say at-at, you can say A-T-A-T, and you can say walker. I’m for all three. […] That’s canon because in the show I have Imperials say walkers, I have them say at-at, and I have them say A-T-A-T.”
As much as their name, the AT-ATs themselves are often cited critically due to the numerous glaring flaws of their design, such as their high center of gravity, limited field of vision, slow movement speed and severely limited maneuverability. The justification is that their design is intended to look imposing, and since Imperial troops would most often be facing planet dwellers with little to no armaments of their own, they certainly would be regardless of their impracticality.
The conclusion is maddening and questions the point of writing this piece in the first place, since even the guy who one way or another has contributed almost as much to Star Wars as George Lucas himself states that there’s no official designation for the death machines. So, the answer of how to speak the name is whatever you want it to be, and perhaps that instead should be used as the final word in arguments.
