Wikipedia says: Tuckerization is the act of using a person’s name in an original story as an in-joke. The term is derived from Wilson Tucker, a pioneering American science fiction writer, fan and fanzine editor, who made a practice of using his friends’ names for minor characters in his stories. For example, Tucker named a character after Lee Hoffman in his novel The Long Loud Silence, and after Walt Willis in Wild Talent.
While writing the final Wheel of Time books, I took a list of people who had participated in a WoT charity drive and used their names as inspiration for character and place names in the books. A fan site collected them here.
A the time I said, “Now, know that I may adapt the name, and may use either the first or the last, depending on what strikes me.”
I’ll probably do more things like this in the future. There’s a lot of people in my books that need names.