The name “Valeris,” it seems, was a portmanteau, combining the name of a Greek deity with some Vulcan gibberish that Meyer came up with. Cattrall said:
“I took the name ‘Valeris’ from the Greek god Eris, the god of strife. And we dropped the vowel because it sounded more Vulcan. I felt it was very much my own. I don’t think she’s like the other women in ‘Star Trek.’ In the sixties, they were mostly beautiful women in great-looking, tight outfits with fabulous makeup and hairdos, more set decoration than real motivators in the mechanics of the plot.”
In many ways, the original “Star Trek” was a very progressive show, but it inarguably had a sexist streak a mile wide. There were a lot of female characters who clearly existed as sex objects for Roddenberry’s vivid fantasies. Cattrall had a point. It wouldn’t be for many years that “Star Trek” would take on a more feminist bent. Cattrall also said elswhere in “The Fifty-Year Mission,” however, that despite Valeris being stronger and more capable than the “eye candy” women of the 1960s, she also kind of wished she got to wear a traditional “Star Trek” miniskirt.
Kim Cattrall also says she was the one who suggested her Vulcan hair to Nicholas Meyer. It seems that Cattrall wanted to find a look that was similar to Spock, while still being her own. Hence the dark hair (like Spock) and a cut that would accentuate her pointed Vulcan ears.