Semi-Neurotic

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“One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.” ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Malone

Use a baby naming book if you have to.
Personally, I like to just use names of people I know or cool names I've heard through the years.
In my opinion, most names will fit a character, unless you're writing fantasy with all those weird, made up names. I mean, John, Toby, Gregg, are pretty universal and can be applied fairly freely.

duston

I always get stuck and call male characters Mark and female ones Sarah. Unless I actually want to put some symbolism into it, I just go to the libary and choose a random authors name.

WriterDude

I write down a few names that I feel fits that particular character. A "rich, sophisticated" person generally have a long or sophisticated name like Alexander, Fredrick, James, Alfred or something like that (males) and Jessica, Ashley, Elisabeth or Victoria (females). Likewise, a poorer, more "down to earth" person generally have a shorter, "to he point" name like Jack, John, Mark, Bob or Steve (males), or Gina, Cass (idy), Rita or Wendy (females). I also try to match their attitude with their names, so a rich, tomboy kinda woman could normally be called for instance Elisabeth, but her friends simply call her Liz or something similar. Hope it helps.

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jadakiss

The best thing is that you cant go wrong really, just go for a name popular of that time. Just use google and serch for popular male/female names of eg:1980 and mix it with a last name any last name. who says it has to go... well unless your writting something that requires a dynamic name like james bond! lol

Alex Kostin

Give Emperors, Kings, Generals etc. historical names or long and strange, like Feodorus, Karmichael, Potemkin
Futuristic names for SF: Oom Desh, Koon Jek, Nil Ulrim
Simple names for short stories: James, Lloyd, Jack, Sam

In fact, you could use your imagination and come up with your own names for originality.

VaguelyAmusing

I use name generators sometimes, and go through them in different categories and write down the ones that catch my eye, then save them to a document and go back to it when I need a name. Google is a wonderful source for name generators.

Amara-J

Baby name books mainly for characters. I try to steer clear of the usual John / Sarah / Henry / Sue / Anne / Elizabeth etc, no offense to people here with those actual names. Just looking for some unique ones.

Fantasy / sci-fi is harder. I mostly end up with crappy names like Shabarat (sounds like a cocktail drink), Darvan (huh?), and a long time ago, Igonuwin (don't ask). Come to think of it, I came up with most of those names while using a Boggle word game, which probably explains the bad and random naming.

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Any moron can
write haiku. Just stop at the
seventeenth syllab

~ Reader's Digest, Nov. 2002 Joke

Erik Buchanan

It's easy if you write on a computer. Use the first names that come into your head. You can change them later.

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Non Serviam

Names are usually the last thing for me. I tend to have nearly-complete pieces with characters called "Protagonist", "Antagonist", "Victim" or "Walk-On" and stick names in with a global find/replace at the last moment.

Principles I use when naming:

1. Keep important characters' names reasonably short; abbreviate if you have to ("Elizabeth" --> "Beth" or "Liz").
2. Try to have each important character's name reasonably distinctive (if you have a "Kristen", a "Kirsten", a "Karen" and a "Carmen" then you'll confuse and irritate your readers). Ideally have them each start with a different letter.
3. Try not to use Western European names for everyone.
4. If you're writing in a fantasy/sci-fi environment and you want made-up names, please put some thought into it! Tolkein got away with made-up names that didn't sound sad because they came from a well-thought-out language. Robert E. Howard did well with borrowed names, but where he made them up, they sounded samey and distinctly crap ("Thak", "Thaug", "Thog").

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Destroyer

I never have much of a problem. If my character is human I just pick an existing name I like and form a surname that goes with it. If the character isn't human, then I just take two names from the enormous list in my head and make them fit together.

Some examples (please don't steal any):
Jade Evett
Kate Arben
Rick Treverni
Elvorn Darek
Nallus Jenk
Allaya Semone
Keltia Noma

If you put enough thought into a name and try it out before you use it, it works well.
(In the case of Darek, he rarely gets referred to by his first name so there's not much of a problem)

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"It's always fun until someone gets hurt, and then it's just hilarious"
Ricochet - Faith No More

"Walk softly, and carry a big gun."
Force Commnander - Dawn of War

Amara-J

Heh. Reminds me of a Reader's Digest joke (early 1990s). Someone said that she had written a novel where the two main characters were named Sarah and David (or something like that). She was editing her book for the last time, when she decided to change "David" to "John" instead. It was a simple task, quickly done, because she used a word editing program that took all "David" words in the text and replaced them with "John".

It was only after she sent her novel to the publisher that she realized something. Earlier on, in the prior story draft, one of her characters had made a reference to Michelangelo's famed work of art, the "Statue of David"...

__________________
Any moron can
write haiku. Just stop at the
seventeenth syllab

~ Reader's Digest, Nov. 2002 Joke

Kye

For fantasy names, I use the hobbit or elvish name generators. For other names, I use either baby name sites, pet name sites (they actually work!), or search up something random in google and see if I can find a name. Last names can be anything, and usually, I don't even worry about them. I also like to use names of people I know, but not to well. For example, I wouldn't use my best friends names, Hannah and Mackenzie, but I may use my second cousin's name, Parker.

Hobbit Name Generator

Elvish Name Generator

Baby Names Site[/url]

Dog Name Site

I hope that helped. I should write something for Writing 101 about character names xD

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JudoChop

Baby naming books are the best. Often you can find a name that fits a character. For example, I named a character who was a hunter Leo Ciaran, which roughly translates to 'dark lion'.

Salaria

It really depends on what type of book you're writing. If you're writing a present time non-fiction, just go ahead and use any name that you want. John, Cameron, Xavier, Jessica, Lindsey. It doesn't really matter.

For young children, you may want to take a really name and make it more "Kiddy". Like, Thomas would be Tommy. Robert would be Bobby. Y's really help.

Fantasy is just fun. Common patterns are using unrealistic letters "X, J, Z, W, Q, K". Or, switching letters, "Ae, Ei".

I like S's personally. And vowels. A's, I's, and E's.
My screename is my favorite fantasy name I've made, Salaria. I also like Ex, whch sounds fantasyish. Exadon, for example.

I'm not that good with futuristic, but I think X's are good. Like: Xaran. Sounds sort of futuristic. Numbers added on... Xara 32-J, sounds like a robot girl.

Hope that helped.