One thing in Star Wars that often gets overlooked is the names. Some are ones we recognize (Ben, Luke, Owen), some sound somewhat odd (Padmé, Dooku), some look like somebody hit random letters on a keyboard. Pretty much all of them, however, have some meaning, whether hidden or obvious -- and contain clues to that character's future, before we discovered what their fates truly were going to be.
Let's start somewhere near the beginning: A New Hope introduces us to Luke Skywalker -- the name is the first hint that he's the good guy. "Skywalker" means exactly what it says: one who walks the sky, or someone who's destined for great things. A fitting name for the central family of the saga -- at least two of whom are talented pilots, literal skywalkers. Luke, on the other hand, means "light" or "bringer of light" -- very suitable given his role in the story, as the one who brings light back to his father and the galaxy. (And, of course, the name Luke itself began as the name Lucas -- no prizes for guessing where that came from.)
Leia's name, on the other hand, means "weary" not quite as good a fit, but obviously she's weary of the Empire (and quite possibly of Han).1 Han Solo also got a relatively simple name: "Solo" literally means "alone" and "Han" means "he." Put them together and you get "he alone" and Han is introduced as a cynical loner.
Padmé's name is one rarely found on Earth (although "Padma" exists as a name), but it has a meaning attached to it too. Padmé means lotus, a flower said to cause dreams -- appropriate considering that it was Anakin's dream which predicted her fate, and also that she comes from a planet associated with gardens and therefore flowers. Also, it is a type of flower that dies soon after blooming, fitting with what was seen in Revenge of the Sith. Anakin's name is more difficult; some people say it's completely made up, others say it comes from Ken Annakin, one of Lucas's friends.2 But as the name has apparently been around since the very first draft of Star Wars (when it was spelled "Annikin"), chances are it was completely invented and kept getting re-invented until it ended up in the form we know it as today.
The Sith names are mostly somewhat obvious: Maul (mauled), Tyranus (tyrant), and Plagueis (plague...the beginning of the plague of the Sith?) pretty much speak for themselves, as does the name of henchman/droid General Grevious. Darth Sidious's name was made by taking the "in" out of "insidious," just as Darth Vader sounds like it was made by taking the "in" out of "invader." The fact that the names have a similarity, as opposed to the other Sith names, is fitting considering that out of all the relationships between Sith, theirs is the most important and complicated one --it gives them a connection.
Others have theorized that Darth Vader means "Dark Father" in Dutch (it doesn't, although it's fairly close). According to the Expanded Universe, "Darth" is the title the Sith Lords made from Dark Lord of the Sith, but as this is never mentioned in the series it was likely invented to give the name an "in-universe" explanation. "Darth" has apparently been around since the very first draft of what eventually became Star Wars, before the Sith had even been invented; Darth Vader was still called Darth Vader even before he was the character we know.
Another less well-known idea of where the name Vader originally came from: George Lucas went to high school with someone called Gary Vader. Could it be a massive coincidence...?3
Count Dooku, the alter-ego of Darth Tyranus, most likely got his name from the Japanese word for poison. Christopher Lee confirms it: "Not many people realise that dooku is Japanese for 'poison' -- which is very appropriate, really, because he's lethal."4 It's a good name for a Sith, as the dark side is something that poisons your mind and Dooku was once a Jedi. It's likely that his title of Count came from Lee's most famous film role, that of Count Dracula, another famous villain.
Palpatine -- the now infamous evil politician/Sith who eventually loses his power like so many before him -- may have gotten his name from Palatine Hill, the city where Rome might have been founded (by Romulus, in Roman mythology), and where many Roman emperors built their palaces. Palpatine's empire resembles a Roman one, a corrupt society which eventually fell, and Palpatine himself has much in common with the arrogant emperors, who rose to power using less than noble means.
Another politician has an intriguing name: Finis Valorum. Finis means finish or end, valor means courage or bravery; with his falling out of power to be replaced by Palpatine, an end to courage (as Palpatine could not be described as particularly brave) does indeed begin.
The first part of Obi-Wan Kenobi's name comes from the name of the sword belt worn by samurai, the warriors who the Jedi are based on. Plenty of thought appears to have gone into many of the Jedi names: Shaak Ti (a female Jedi glimpsed briefly in Attack of the Clones) means energy; Jocasta (the Jedi Archivist) was the mother of Oedipus in mythology -- another story about fate. Qui-Gon Jinn's name is perhaps the cleverest: his first name comes from qi gong, an type of Chinese medicine. "Qigong relies on the traditional Chinese belief that the body has an energy field generated and maintained by the natural respiration of the body, known as Qi."5 Sounds a lot like the Living Force, and is appropriate for someone who meditates in the midst of battle.
"Jinn," on the other hand, is a type of genie, convenient for the person who grants Anakin's wish. Genies are creatures neither inherently good or evil, and the discovery of Anakin could be argued as being either a very good thing or a very bad thing, for the Jedi and the galaxy in general. In The Hero With A Thousand Faces (the book which helped inspire Star Wars) the Jinn are described as "dangerous because they threaten the fabric of security into which we have built ourselves and our family. But they are fiendishly fascinating too, for they carry keys that open the whole realm of the desired and feared adventure of the discovery of the self."6 Something pretty close to that happened in The Phantom Menace, as Anakin is separated from his mother, his only family -- and eventually Anakin does discover his self, although it takes him a little while to do so.
The name of Anakin's mother is taken from Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, light and fortune, known as "the mother of the universe" -- and Shmi gives birth to the Chosen One. Interestingly, Lakshmi is associated often with the lotus, another parallel to be drawn between Shmi and Padmé, the two women most important to Anakin.
Other names are less rooted in mythology but still are worth thinking about: Mon Calamari get their name from a type of squid (and just happen to look like a squid species); a couple of the Neimodians are named after politicians; and Orn Free Taa was derived from "corn fritter." And of course, not every name means something or has a story behind it -- a great many of them were probably chosen simply because they sounded good. "Owen Lars" sounds like the sort of name that a farmer might have, "Yoda" sounds old and wise, and R2D2 was just a combination of letters and numbers that sounded good (his name wasn't taken from a film reel of American Graffti; that's just a myth, it turns out). And Chewbacca and Mace Windu don't appear to have much meaning to them. Also, (an addition of sorts to the third Darth Vader name theory) Boba Fett was apparently also taken from someone George Lucas went to school with, Bob A. Fett. However, that has yet to be confirmed as true, and most likely is just a fandom legend.
A few of the planets have well-chosen names as well: a dagoba (with an extra letter in the film, "Dagobah") is "a Buddhist shrine or mound containing relics of a Buddha or important manuscript."7 Suitable for the planet where the last of the Jedi -- one of the last few relics of the Force -- lives. Geonosis sounds like "genesis," meaning beginning, and that particular planet was where the Clone Wars began. Hoth, on the other hand, sounds like "hot" -- the exact opposite of what it is.
The names of Star Wars certainly give the story extra depth once they are looked into -- up there with the best of other fictional universes where names feature into the equation. (Harry Potter, a world populated with people like werewolves called Remus Lupin and Fenrir Grayback, springs to mind.) They deepen the story's mythological roots even further, and give us greater insight into the galaxy far far away and the characters who inhabit it.
Works Cited
1 The definitions of Luke and Leia's names from babynames.com
2 From the Darth Vader entry on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader
3 TheForce.net message boards: http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=5981698&page=1
4 J.W. Rinzler. The Making of Revenge of the Sith. Random House, 2005, page 112.
5 An excellent essay on Qui-Gon's name exists here: http://www.qui-gonline.org/features/naming.htm
6 Joseph Campbell. Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Hero As Warrior). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968, page 7.
7 Quoted from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagoba
