AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Well, I would guess this is true of all cultures if you go deep enough into the past. Chinese names have similar character for instance, my wife's name would literally translate as Bright Jade. My daughter's given name has a meaning of "green grass on the bank of a stream" etc. I mean, the thematic content can be different. So for instance traditional biblical names relate to religious themes, whereas traditional European ones often reflect trades or place of origin, but in most cases the meanings have been worn away with time, though obviously not entirely. My family name is easily enough identified as meaning "Herder of Cows"I have this other weird take from Japanese culture, that most wouldn't notice, I'd think. When you think of feudal Japan even with it's brutality, the fact that it was a police state across the whole empire - we think of Japanese as refined and cultured, if very alien to our own European examples. However, I see almost a refined and cultured allusion to Native American culture. Here me out. Japanese personal names, at least the old classical styles of names in old Japan are plants, flowers, forces of nature, ideals - they almost sound native. My Japanese grandfather, whom I never met - passed long before I was born. And noting the Japanese put the last name (family name) first, and personal following - in order of precedence. Shimizu Yukio was his name. Shimizu means "purest water" and Yukio means "snow" with the male identifier (Yukiko would be the feminine). Snow of the Purest Water sounds like a Native American name, to me. Shinto, their older religion, while ancient and refined is very much worship of kami, in the form of natural beings and natural places - places of rare beauty like at hot spring, a waterfall, a lush pond, a curious rock formation at the edge of the sea. That's where the shrines are located. So while the Japanese were technologically, mathematically advanced enough to easily adapt to more modern outside cultures with - almost equivalent to Europe, in a completely different way. Yet, at the same time there's a deeper Native American quality about them. I don't know, maybe it's just me - but that seems possible.
But I get what you're driving at, many 'indigenous' names seem to relate to nature pretty closely. Maybe there's some kind of principle at work here in terms of what sort of names survive or get adopted in different cultures. In a few games I've run I did something like giving all the names of places and people literal meanings in modern English. One might argue that this gives an impression that is closer to what a lot of names would have sounded like to people in past cultures (at least some).