Where do you get names from?

[Apocal]

Simple question for the fiction writers: is there some common pool or list where you guys pull names from for your stories? Names of people especially but names of places count too. I remember the Kickstarter had an option for the backers to give a character name; is that used as open source?

[cray]

I usually look in the credits of a nearby book then mix and match first and last names.

Either that or I already had a name idea.

[Mendrugo]

I figure out where they are from, what ethnicities are present there (based on world name, if nothing else), then google up lists of that culture’s common names, ideally with meanings, and then pick something that sounds good.  So, for a Canopian cryo-unit saleswoman (Canopus worships the Greek pantheon in some parts), I picked Anastasia Pantazis, which basically translates as She Who Shall be Resurrected and Live Forever.  Good name for Sun-Tzu’s freezer vendor.

[Kit deSummersville]

I come up with my names much similar to Mendrugo, though sometimes I like to mix and match, especially with the nationalistic cultures of BattleTech. A surname from one culture and then a first name from the Japanese/Chinese/German/Roman/Irish/etc. overlay that the nation or province has.

[Chris Hartford]

A variety of ways - baby name books, newspapers, census records, phone books (back in the day), or names in history books (and it helps to live in a multilingual environment  in my normal life, so this isn’t just “John smith” etc)

E.g. I named Sarah McEvedy of Clan Wolverine because the first book I saw on my bookshelf a quarters-century back back was the Atlas of Medieval History by Colin McEvedy

In a recent piece, I used the name of a washing machine at the venue we’d been larping.

For another, a character was named for a cat (whose personality matched the character) at the rescue I volunteer with ;)

[Mendrugo]

For my update on Chapultepec in Shrapnel #18, I looked for traditional Aztec names, and found a census record from the 1500s (https://nahuatlstudies.blogspot.com/2014/11/nahuatl-names-nahuatl-names-in-1544.html) that had both a good collection of Nahuatl male and female names, as well as the author's best attempts at translating them.  Standouts included Cocoliloc ("She is hated"); Tematlalehua ("She bruises people"); Tecocoa ("He hurts people"); and Xochinauhual ("Flower sorcerer").

[Doc Swift]

Fifteen or so years ago, I would sometimes flip through phone books and randomly pick a name. Other times, I've looked up ancient of contemporary names from various cultures. Sometimes I'll look up words in other languages and use the ones that sound cool for character names (I must have used "sword" in other languages at least ten times). Sometimes I'll just make up something that sounds cool (like Thrax Shadow). Whatever feels right at the time.

[Kojak]

For people names, I usually bust out the random name generator in MegaMek, set it to the appropriate faction, and then hit the button over and over again until I land on one I like. Place names usually involve a bunch of research and nested references to the subject in question.