Many, many years ago, in a town far, far away, I was a lonely, bored bachelor with a typewriter (thanks Mom!). I wrote "hundreds" of short stories (the longest broke 100 pages before I grew bored with it). In one of those stories an interstellar drifter was born: Orion Core.
The name 'Orion' is simply a reference to the constellation that shines brightly in the winter months of the northern hemisphere. The surname, 'Core,' isn't his real surname, but the dual focus of the original character: to understand himself (his core) and to 'discover' the galactic core ("It's hard to discover something everybody can see from thousands of parsecs out, Orion"). The Original Orion Core (from hereon out referred to as OOC) was never given a surname.
In EVE, I've not given much thought to the name as I've used it in other games (right along with a host of other main and secondary characters from those long ago stories).