Did Dickens invent the McGuffin?

That is, a plot device that is ultimately irrelevant.

I'm thinking of the condition that Pip's benefactor imposes on him that he shall always be called Pip. For a while we naturally assume - surely by design - that his new nickmame 'Handel' is going to have catastrophic effect on his inheritance, but in fact, the name issue is never referred to again.

Some people (trying to account for this) think that the point was so that his benefactor could find Pip again later in life, but that's nonsense, as Pip could always be located through Jaggers.

Some people think that Pip's benefactor didn't want him to change, but that's contradicted by the clear intention of making him a gentleman.

Perhaps Dickens originally intended to come back to the plot point later in the story, but then changed the story as he was writing it, and decided to leave it in (perhaps serial publication had something to do with this).

However, a stronger suspicion is that Dickens deliberately designed it from the beginning as a bogus plot point to enrich the narrative, which therefore makes it a McGuffin.