It's nice when a little tribute can be offered like that. Not just a namecheck (that's called a Tuckerisation), but a genuine homage to a fan.
Like Geordi in Next Generation, who Gene Rodenberry named for George la Forge, a Trek fan in the 1970's who died from muscular dystrophy.
Or Project Pegasus having Director Gruenwald, after Mark Gruenwald, Marvel's Kurt Busiek before Kurt Busiek (And I mean that with absolute respect to both)
Or, and this one is killing me because I can't remmeber the guys name, during Busiek's Avengers run we meet the head of a Superhuman information gathering centre, who is named for an online fan who was famed for his copious and encyclopaedic lists of superhero information, who had died sometime before.