I've heard that speculated before, I think, although I myself know nothing about his books (save for what I found when I was attempting to debunk a certain post about Chthulu being a Babylonian god.) But I do have a comment. Now, perhaps I'm speaking out of ignorance here, but bear with me.
It concerns the only name I know from those books, the one I found was certainly not a Babylonian god, Chthulu. Now, this may be widely known, I don't know, but I came upon it of my own, and found it somewhat interesting. When I had seen that name, it didn't strike me as Babylonian and, after figuring out that it was from a novel (looking it up on Wikipedia), dismissed it as a fully fictional name. After all, it is quite oddly pronounced, and the th sounds really weird if the pronounciation was given aright on Wikipedia, some sort of t, and why the heck would a ch be pronounced like a k?
But now I'm not so sure.
Not one week ago I was writing a paper on Greek religion and, in the course of looking through some books that were a measure beyond me, I happened upon something interesting, the word 'Chthonioi'. Now, it may be coinciedence pure and simple, but somehow I doubt it. Firstly, what the Greek word means. From what I know of the Chthulu from that short Wikipedia article I read long ago, he was some sort of ancient creature that lived under the sea, a great demon of some sort barely sentient (for which, I assume, you connect him with Lavos.) These Chthonioi in Greek are, according to these textbooks I was reading, essentially the 'gods of the underworld', who would dwell in and under the earth. I looked up the root for the name in the Greek Lexicon, Chthos or something like that, and it means earth. Now, aside from the fact that the four letters Chth are almost never put together (or, at least, I have never outside of these two cases seen them together), there is pronounciation. The ch in Greek is actually a chi, pronounced by some as in the German 'nacht', but by others as an aspirated 'k', which for English ears and tongues isn't that far removed from a k. Likewise the th. It is not the soft one as in English, apparently. It is more aspirated as well, similar to a t, even as the ch is similar to k. Thus, in rough English terms, Chth becomes pronounced K-t, which is the very same as the pronounciation of Chthulu that Wikipedia gave. Therefore I came to a conclusion: it's Greek! Not only that, but the idea seems to match very well, also.
This, then, can tie in perfectly with Lavos. He is, after all, a god (by the defenition that the Greeks would probably have put upon gods) that resides under the earth, is he not?
As I said, being fully ignorant of this, it may just be common knowledge to those that know it, as simple seeming as to me when someone says something about Morgoth based on LOTR, and me knowing the entire story from the Silmarillion saying 'aha!'. But in the off chance that it isn't, I figured I'd mention it. Disregard this if I'm being a fool, I just find such things related to Greek words interesting.
