I've been meaning to make note of this for a while, but keep forgetting and/or missing opportunities to bring it up in something resembling a sensible context. In A Time To Kill, the Klingon Fleet Captain leading the assault force poised to attack Tezwa is named Krogan. The krogan are the "Proud Warrior Race" of another sci-fi setting, Mass Effect. Since A Time to Kill predates that game series, this is a coincidence. Still, it's an amusing one, no? 'Krogan' is a fine Klingon name, but now it's even finer. Here's to the aptly named Fleet Captain Krogan. Now there's a Klingon who surely has a quad.
Probably just coincidence. English-speakers often use names with "K" or "Kr" sounds in them to connote strength and toughness, and there may be a resonance with German krieg, meaning war. Plus a lot of alien names in fiction are coined based on slight variations on familiar names, and "Krogan" is reminiscent of the Gaelic name "Grogan" (which comes from a root meaning anger or fierceness, by the way, though that's probably coincidence).
I think the Krogan do have a few -deliberate - Klingon allusions. But they also, as Christopher, infers seem drawn from the generic melting pot of tough warrior aliens. Still headbutting, clans and Michael Dorn all seem quite thlingon in nature... [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puKSMU1SkOA[/yt]
In that case, "Krogan" sounds like it was derived from its resemblance to "Klingon," so it's not that surprising that it would coincidentally show up as an actual Klingon name. There are only so many ways to put sounds together. And there have been so many Klingon names coined by now that it's a statistical likelihood that at least one of them would be coincidentally identical to a name used in another fictional context.
I wonder what Klingons would think of krogan, given that for all their warrior prowess the krogan are, in their natural state, the hunted as much as the hunter, if not more so? Krogan are basically their planet's equivalent of rabbits, ecologically speaking. Which is largely why they're so aggressive.
It's actually a reference to Mass Effect. David Mack can see the future... don't let him tell you otherwise! Krogan: When I came of age, a bunch of warriors poked me with painsticks! krogan: Yeah? I had to go up against a Thresher Maw. Your move, Klingon. Krogan: Um, well, there were a *lot* of painsticks...