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.
Finnish name "sounded Soviet".
Oh Frank, don't we all wish...
Reading about the Finnish civil war :deeper-sadness:
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