Actually Tolkien has a lot to say concerning character names, in the "Translations" section in the back of RotK. Tolkien says that in "Hobbitish" Merry was actually named Kalimac:
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Meriadoc was chosen to fit the fact that this character's shortened name. Kali, meant in the Westron 'jolly, gay', though it was actually an abbreviation of the now unmeaning Buckland name Kalimac.
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Likewise, Sam and his father had names that were similarly changed to give them a certain meaning to the reader:
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But Sam and his father Ham were really called Ban and Ran. These were shortenings of Banazîr and Ranugad, originally nicknames, meaning 'half-wise, simple' and 'stay-at-home', but being words that had fallen out of colloquial use they remained as traditional names in certain families. I have therefore tried to preserve these features by using Samwise and Hamfast, modernizations of ancient English samwís and hámfæst which corresponded closely in meaning.
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Personally, I find this "Translation" section to be fascinating. While it's still clearly a fictional account, it does give some insight on names that were purposely chosen to be close to words or styles of words that the reader might be familiar with.