It's very common in science fiction and fantasy for authors to use words or word-roots from the real world as names for things.
For example, in Star Trek, there are the avaricious Ferengi. Their leader is the [Grand] Nagus. Their ship captains hold the title of daimon. All of these are real-world words. Ferengi means "foreigner" and was used in West Asia to refer to Europeans ("Franks") following the Crusades. Nagus, when spelled "negus," was the title of the supreme ruler of the Ethiopian Empire. And daimon is a cognate of the Greek word meaning "demon," though it originally meant something like "guardian spirit."
Once you start looking for it, this convention is everywhere. Names and terms and titles (and all such words) are extremely laborious to come up with, and the real world has a massive supply of them ready-made. I am a huge supporter of this convention, not only because of its convenience but because it's good to use the language we have: good to make references to real-world things that people might otherwise have given no thought to! It deepens storytelling by creating connections and allusions, especially if it is done with more depth of thought and deliberateness as opposed to just snatching up words that sound nice.
(I am also a big supporter of using real-world words and roots directly, in their literal sense, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about naming fictional things.)
You'll find this convention completely suffused throughout my writing, both in The Curious Tale and in Galaxy Federal.
For instance, in Relance, the so-called Methow Valley, at the head of the Keferst River Valley west of Davoranj, is named for the real-world Methow Valley here in Washington State (itself named for the Methow River), where I have been and had some incredible experiences. When I think of Relance's Methow Valley, I think almost one-to-one of the real Methow, except that Relance's Methow lays west and opens onto green lands rather than desert. The word Methow itself is the name of the Native American people who originally lived there, and ultimately means "sunflower seeds." Aboriginal names feature in my work often, because they have always loomed large in the places where I've lived—California, Washington State, and Texas—and I often find them beautiful. In my hometown, most of the roads were named after "Indian" tribes, helping to expand my vocabulary and making it easier for me to remember tribal names "down the road" in life, heh. Whenever you point to a real-world word in fiction, however indirectly, there is a chance, however small, that you will draw your readers' attention onto the real world, and perhaps their curiosity will lead them to add to their understanding of history! That's a nice byproduct of enjoying a work of fiction. I certainly appreciate being on the receiving end of it, when I happen to notice.
The Methow is just one example out of dozens (more likely hundreds) in my writing. (I use a lot of original vocabulary!) I'm not just talking about capitalized words, either, nor are my sources limited to proper nouns.
