The titular country of “The Airlords of Han” was actually Han China – being used in the racist Yellow Peril sense, since the villains in Buck Rogers (both the novellas and the early comics) were the soldiers of a Chinese Empire that had managed to conquer America in a sneak attack.

I don’t deny that this is a possible inspiration for Han Solo’s first name. However, it seems to me more likely that the character of Han Pritcher from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series was more important in this regard.

Pritcher and his partner, Bail Channis (!), are detectives working for the empire of “the Mule,” a dictator who conquered the titular Foundation settlement. Their objective is to find the elusive “Second Foundation,” a group of telepaths seeking to overturn the Mule’s empire and restore the rightful government of the Foundation.

The two operatives eventually succeed in capturing a member of the Second Foundation; unfortunately for the Mule, this doesn’t work out quite as he’d expected.

Also, another inspiration for Han Solo’s name (both first and last) was probably Hansel from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale. In this case, the surname “Solo” suggests that, unlike his gingerbread-gorging namesake, Han the space-pirate doesn’t have a sister.