Because you mentioned a couple names being weird, the throwaway named characters and throwaway POV characters are the names of actual people. Because of how much trouble Brandon had in TGS doing names (because his naming conventions are different than RJ's), he set up a charity where if you donated, you'd get put on a list to be a character, or you could donate a lot and bid on being a POV character. My name is in the next book because of this. He just takes your name and adjusts it slightly.
I think I did know this! All in all, it’s a nice solution to the problem of having wildly different naming conventions, in the same vein as not trying to imitate writing style in ways that would just come across as forced. So taking the inevitability of that difference and using it to raise money for charity seems like an elegant way to handle it.
(And very cool that your name is in the series -- nice one!)