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This is intended to be an out-of-universe question
I recently learned of Thanatos the Greek god of death, and I could not help but notice how similar the name Thanos is to the name Thanatos. This got me wondering if the original writers did this intentionally, especially considering Thanos' relationship with and association to death (and Death) in the comics.
Is there any indication that the similarity in names between Thanatos and Thanos is more than coincidence?
Yes, "Thanos" is indeed derived from the name "Thanatos", the name of the Freudian concept of death drive (which in turn is named after the Thanatos of myth), according to Vulture:
While attending a psychology class in junior college in order to woo a woman, Starlin had become briefly acquainted with the Freudian concept of Thanatos, humanity’s drive for death and self-destruction. As a result, even before he started at Marvel, he’d drawn up plans for a villain named Thanos, using that subtracted spelling “because it ‘looked’ better in print.”
