If you really want to create an array rather than a list use either
String[] names = ["lucas", "Fred", "Mary"]
or
def names = ["lucas", "Fred", "Mary"].toArray()
MetaArray is a class that extends ndarray, adding support for per-axis meta data storage. This class is useful for storing data arrays along with units, axis names, column names, axis values, etc. MetaArray objects can be indexed and sliced arbitrarily using named axes and columns. Download here: MetaArray.py
D. Hendler, N. Shavit, и L. Yerushalmi. Proceedings of the sixteenth annual ACM symposium on Parallelism in algorithms and architectures, стр. 206--215. ACM, (2004)