Hi, TDogg.
Well, I have thoughts along those lines myself. I decided that the family or at least Rick decided to go for the English version of the given last name. I didn't think of adoption. Good point.
When I started writing and rewriting my two year old unfinshed fanfic

, I decided that somewhere along the way I'd like to have something about Hunter's Italian heritage come about in it. So, I found a site that translated the word Hunter into the Italian word -
Cacciatore (nm) and
Cacciatrice (nf). I posted about it months ago, but I don't think anyone replied.

Nice to see you're here now with the same interest.
Rick Hunter is also know as The Head Hunter, which is translated as
cacciatore di teste . Now at the site, it is listed as head-hunter, so I don't know if it means the lead person of a group of hunters, or someone who's the leader of actual headhunters. Head of hunters. Hunters of heads. di = of? teste = head?
One of the sites I used for translation -
http://it.wordreference.com/it/translation.asp?enit=Hunter&v=b