House Harkonnen is named after very common Finnish surname Härkönen. Frank Herbert said he found it in a phone book and found it suitably "scary" or "soviet" to use in the book.
It's funny every time I hear it because it's like you took a very popular surname like Johnson and change it a bit, Game of Thrones -style, to Johnsonn and made that a house.
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Finnish name "sounded Soviet".
Oh Frank, don't we all wish...
Stalin should have pushed into Finland during the Continuation War and shot all the white butchers for what they did during the civil war, starting with Mannerheim
That's actually a really fun Dune fact! Thanks! :party-parrot-science: