A Southern Adventist University student recovered from an early minus-$800 on the "Jeopardy! College Championship" on Tuesday, finishing with $17,000.
Hans von Walter's final earnings, though, weren't enough to edge out his female opponents from Boston College and Florida State University. He finished third in the quarter-final bout.
But this was not before he garnered heavy laughter from the audience when "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek asked: "[Von Walter] did not know his name until he was 5 years old. What happened?"
"Well until I was 5, my mom's very Hispanic, so she called me by my middle name, which is Fredrick," von Walter explained. "But then on the very first day of kindergarten, I'm looking for my name tag -- my desk that says Fredrick.
"And [my mom] kind of pushes me over to this name tag of this one kid named Hans. And I'm like, 'That's not my name.' And she's like, 'Yeah, it is your name. I've got to go to work. I'll see you at the end of the day.' I've been traumatized ever since."
The audience erupted.
Von Walter earned $7,000 of his final total on the final "Jeopardy!" question. The category was "Words in 20th Century Novel" and the words were "brood, baying, bleating, comrade, tyranny and rebellion."
Von Walter answered correctly with "Animal Farm."
A junior biochemistry major at Southern Adventist, von Walter is the first student from the university to compete on the game show.
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