Where did George Lucas think of a name like that from? It's a very pretty and exotic sounding name, and it's the name of Darth Vader's wife and Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia's mother. It just seems perfect like the perfect name for that character? What are the origins of it, though? Is it a real name?
padme = lotus flower Lucas ( presumably ) took this from Joseph Campbell works such as The Masks Of God.
It's not an actual name, but it is part of a Buddhist mantra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_mani_padme_hum The word 'padme' means lotus flower. I wouldn't read too much into it, Lucas has tended to use names for the way they sound and the connotations they invoke, as opposed to their literal meanings. 'Sith' is an archaic word with various meanings (GL most likely came across it in the sci-fi works of Edgar Rice Burroughs), but it's obviously meant to invoke the words 'sinister' & 'slither'. Organa isn't a real word, but clearly sounds like 'organic'. One exception is 'Solo' - Han's a loner, to a certain extent. 'Vader' is an actual surname (there was a Gary Vader at GL's high school, believe it or not), and it is the Dutch word for father, although in Dutch it's pronounced 'Vah-der', not 'Vay-der'. However, it's clearly meant to invoke 'invader'. Darth Vader = Dark Invader, not 'Dark Father'. 'Darth' isn't a real word, and it's a bit of a stretch to claim that it's an abbreviation of 'Dark Lord of the Sith', as the original character to bear the name wasn't actually a Sith Lord, he was an Imperial officer like Tarkin or Jerjerrod. GL probably made it up from scratch to invoke 'dark', although it's been claimed he may have taken it from the Arthurian tale the Morte d'Arthur.
The Sith may have something to do with the aes sidhe, in terms of their ability to be "invisible" and a hidden society.
I don't think so - when GL came up with the Sith, they weren't a hidden cult, they were just Dark Side mercenaries in the service of the Empire. If you look at the Wikipedia entry for the various meanings of the word Sith, it's tempting to leap at the references in Gaelic folklore, but when he was writing the early drafts of SW, GL was mainly reading sci-fi pulp novels and comic books. It's far more likely that he first encountered the word in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series of sci-fi novels featuring John Carter, in which 'Sith' are large predatory insects.
