Meaningful Name - Television Tropes & Idioms

"My name is Alice, but—"
"It's a stupid name enough!" Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently; "What does it mean?"
"Must a name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully.
"Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh...
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (Interestingly enough, it is largely because of this work that the name Alice does mean something.)

Believe it or not, one of the most difficult tasks you face as Dungeon Master is dreaming up cool names for all those places, gods, monsters, and NPCs you create. As superficial as this chore might seem, nothing kills interest in an AD&D® game faster than goofy names. The minute your players are attacked by Gargathrank the Unclean, a great deal of the credibility you've carefully fostered flies straight out the window. Don't forget that the players' first impressions of your game world are based, in part, on the names you choose.
— Ray Winninger, "Dungeoncraft", Dragon Magazine (May 1999)

A name that has a direct, barely-hidden meaning to it. The first, last, or full name says something primal about the character. Often has multiple layers. To hide the meaning a bit, use an alternate spelling or foreign equivalent. Instead of writers having to make up random words or think of real names, they can use mythological names or old words.

As an example, it is common to use for heroic characters names associated with hunting. So, apart from Hunter, which is a valid first and last name in English, you can use a translation to another language (Jager, or the phonetic Yeager), or the name of a predatory animal (Wolf, Hawk) or a translation of that (Wolfe, Lupin, Lupis, Wulf). (Which is kinda cool, which is why this can double up with Awesome Mc Coolname.)

Self-chosen names can manifest this naturally, but may make the character look arrogant if the symbolism is too blatant. This can be a problem with bestowed names as well; although the character didn't create it, if he accepts it without much objection, the effect is similar.

Very common in cartoons, where the meaning is most times not hidden at all, except that the target audience may not have the vocabulary to get the joke. Also common in Anime, since Japanese names have a lot of obvious literal meaning to start with. See notes at Theme Naming.

Real-life examples of this are often referred to as "aptronyms". The magazine New Scientist refers to it as "nominative determinism" in a tongue-in-cheek manner, and encourages people to send examples in.

According to The Other Wiki, the proper name for this trope is "charactonym".

Of course this goes back to the Bible (and probably turns up in the books of other religions).

Compare Prophetic Names, Steven Ulysses Perhero. See also Names To Run Away From Really Fast, which is about names indicating being a Bad Ass and heavily overlaps with this trope, and Punny Name, which many of these names fall into as well. If the name is obviously supposed to be meaningful, but the meaning is wrong, see Hollywood Meaningful Name.