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With the expectation of Heatwave.

They're secret surfers.

More seriously, they're revolutionaries who ride the waves of popular causes. Revolutions are much easier when there are waves of sentiment in particular directions, e.g. pro-change, anti-establishment, anti-exploitation.

Also, they like waves of physical energy that help their cause. Using energy waves minimises their effort.

Like most other TFs their name tends to be akin to their abilities.

snavej wrote: More seriously, they're revolutionaries who ride the waves of popular causes. Revolutions are much easier when there are waves of sentiment in particular directions, e.g. pro-change, anti-establishment, anti-exploitation.

Also, they like waves of physical energy that help their cause. Using energy waves minimises their effort.

Deep, but you may be overthinking it.

To answer the question, I don't think there is a specific reason why it's more Decepticons that have that name beyond the fact that two very iconic first generation Decepticons, Shockwave and Soundwave, were given that name. That shaped a precedent, and from there on more characters with similar names were created.

As much as we as fans love to discuss continuity and the deeper mythos behind the Transformers, we shouldn't forget the cartoon and comics were originally created for one major reason: to sell toys. When the first season was created, there wasn't much of a mythos that had been created (as is evident from the G1 production bible that was leaked a while ago). They had the basic Cybertronian origin story that was revealed in the first couple of episodes (the More Than Meets The Eye three-parter), and brief (VERY brief) blurbs on each character written by Bob Budiansky of Marvel, and a very rough outline for who they wanted to see in spotlight episodes. Even the idea that the Decepticons are revolutionaries did not exist when Soundwave and Shockwave were created; there was only the notion that two vaguely defined factions were at war with each other, that the Autobots were the good guys, the Decepticons were the bad guys, and that Autobots are not natural fighters, unlike the Decepticons (this is literally stated in one of the pilot episodes). Any ideological reasons behind the conflict that go deeper than "we want to control the energy that can revive Cybertron and grant us rulership over it" are creations of a later era, and had not yet been conceived when Shockwave and Soundwave were created.

Based on this I believe it's safe to say there was no deeper reason behind the number of Decepticon characters with wave in their name. It's just the result of the fact that two particularly iconic and popular first season characters happened to carry the name (the only reason for this being that they sound cool and reflect the abilities of the character), and this set a precedent. That is all.