TheBoost said:

None of these are "clear examples." The logic seems downright tortured.

Picts were a real people. Lucas used Picts. Therefore he took a pre-existing literary name, which as you say is NOT literary, from Howard?

willow Ufgood and Frodo Baggins are both names made of two troches, and that's a "reworking?" So is my name, Morgan Sowell. Were my parents inspired by Frodo, or Bilbo, or Lotho? Or by Millard Fillmorr, who also has the same meter?

My point was that Lucas apparently felt he could not use the name Picts--it was too close to something pre-existing. And given the similarity of "King Kael" to "King Kull," another Howard connection seems quite logical.

If you still don't believe that Lucas frequently took pre-existing names and lightly altered or combined them, all I can do is point you to the word "Jedi" itself.

The Jedi were originally called "Jedi Bendu" in the early scripts of SW 1977. But in fact, this name is really a combination of the first part of jidai-geki, the Japanese name for period-piece samurai films, and the second half of "prana-bindu," a set of meditative exercises mentioned in Frank Herbert's Dune.

And if that doesn't convince you, then it's obviously fruitless for me to spend any more time arguing with you.