A relatively low Kickstarter reward (GB£40) was to have your submitted name added to the list of NPC pilot names. Several thousand backers reached that level of donation.
A lot of those Kickstarters are no longer in-game, so you may not recognize them if/when you see them.
Further, there isn't a single "database of names". Names are split up into categories, with considerable prejudice employed in deciding which sub-database a name is found in. "Sensible-looking" names eg. "Jane Smith" are added to the "innocent trader" or "miner" databases. Things that looked like gamertags eg. "sHipKiLLa2000" or "vroooooooom" get added to the pirate or bounty-hunter databases.