How did you come up with your character's name?

Back, I guess haha, because now I have the time to type up a wall...

When I make characters I figure out their ethnicity first and think about names about the area. I do have some OCs who don't follow that though (like a Scandinavian named Flora, I just really wanted her to be a Flora when I saw her, so-) because I name them by their appearance or personality. Sometimes the names are kind of simple and silly (Oka for a cherry blossom spirit). So not all my OCs have a reason to their names.

• Lily and Crystal? For the latter I just want a Crystal, not sure about Lily. Ironically their personalities does not match their name... now...
• Names derived by words! I love these! Constella from "constellation", Grimarye from "grimoire", Griff from "griffin", so on...
• Names related to their role in the story! Natsuki and Rui were born in summer and sadness respectively, as Natsuki means "summer hope" and Rui means "tears".
• Naming mistakes oops. At first Kira was supposed to be "an evil alter who wants to achieve immortality" but that didn't happen. Her name Kira was from what a character in Death Note said, saying that "Kira" sounded similar to the English word "killer". However, it means "sparkle", and she is a sparkle in Sakura's life.
• Speaking of Sakura... backstory related! I mean she was adopted, so yeah.
• For Arielle I searched up several gender neutral names and changed it up as how I liked it, and holy names for Cælinus.

I take naming very seriously for both given and surnames. Generally I prefer to have names bear some kind of significance or meaning, and for them to reflect at least one thing about the characters they're attached to. So a lot of times I have several tabs open for research while trying to pick a name for someone.

When I make new characters (which usually occurs through writing), I plug a random name in, and put a character to it later on. The stories behind some of my older characters' names, therefore, are much more specific than they are for most of the background characters.

Dillon Zhang started out as Dillon Pikelli because I thought the name was a funny little pun for 'dill pickle'. But as time went on, I realized that the last name was too odd to fit into the grim direction I wanted to take the story- so I looked up some chinese surnames and went with one of those (his father is chinese, and his mother caucasian). Zhang seemed to fit better than the other options so I stuck with that.

Lee McGale's origins came from a drawing of an edgy punk teenager who smoked cigarettes and wore a black leather jacket. I had seen the 'L' loser sign in the media and thought, "hey, what if I had a loser character named Loser Lee?". The first name stuck, and I liked McGale as a surname (despite the fact that it may not even be a real name... lmao) but I like the sound so I still haven't changed it to this day.

Reid McKinley I don't even know if there's a story for this one? Not too sure where it came from but I think I stole 'Reid' from a kid in one of my classes (even though his spelling ended up just being Reed).

Zachary Xavier again, not too sure about this one. Zachary must have just sounded like a cool name, and Xavier seemed cool as well. Who would have known that the Xaviers would have grown up to become such a critical part of the overarching story?

Overall, I don't really have a naming process? This sort of thing just comes randomly to me. I haven't felt the need to make any new OCs for at least the past few months, so I wouldn't be able to track down my processes for any of those, even if I wanted to.

Headcase went from Pillow, to Pillowcase, to Headcase. This was late at night and I had no idea what I was doing

Good ol' Egg originated from a dream I had where he was the main character basically, and as soon as I woke up my brain went ".. eg.. .g... shape.. ..... EGG!"

Athens.... I'm not entirely sure, I needed a character for another one of my characters's stories and his basic design and name just. Poofed. Athens. I guess I just like names that aren't names.

LC was named originally as a "we don't have a name yet" name but then I got attached to it. Literal names! Hurray! Same with Owl, but she was originally Owlman.

I have several methods- baby name website, random name generator, or vaguely-related word. With each of my characters their name typically does relate to them or their character somehow- sometimes it's very obvious, like with Hornet, sometimes it's less clear at a glance...and then sometimes you get characters like Aimee Bay whose name is a terrible, terrible pun.

for felix, i sorta looked at him and said "yuuuup, now that's a felix right there if i've ever seen one" but for his actual name i had to do some digging on a few different baby name websites to find a name that sounded right...and ended up with fujiyori

emil was a bit different and a lot stupider because...i had no idea that "emil" was an actual name before i created him, and then it came up as a dweller name on fALLOUT SHELTER OF ALL THINGS and i was like "haha what" 

and then i just had this unnamed character i made during class and he just became emil

most of my ocs follow the felix model where i just kinda look at them and a name comes to me tho

Rhae started out as a game of thrones fan character, whose name was "Rhaenys Waters." Eventually it was shortened to Rhae, which my friends find is a lot easier to spell

Okay, let's see...

Augustus von Langenstein went through a whole bunch of names until I realized that they were all decidedly English (Julius Augustus Morgan/Julius Morgan Augustine was a big one, though the name order changed a lot), and Gus is an 18th century Austrian nobleman. After that realization, the name just kind of happened - Augustus Friedrich Theodor von Langenstein. Really mostly just a bunch of first names I like and that happen to fit his age and location. 

Jaime Peterson was originally called James Collingwood (as a Good, Solid Navy Name for the Fantasy Pirate story that character came from) until I decided she'd work better as a woman. James -> Jaime because I'm lazy, Collingwood -> Petterson, because... idk? 'S a nice last name. Might've had Pettson and Findus on my mind due to Jaime's 90's/2000's childhood or something.

Elliot de Maudeville has a slightly different story - I originally really wanted to name a character "Maude", settled on "Maude Williams", and then... accidentally created a dude, so that didn't work out. Shuffled around some syllables, ended up with "de Maudeville", and plopped a nice, short first name before it. Wilhelmina Harriet Norton was also a matter of "Hey, this first name is one I'd like to use at some point".

0813 is a series of convoluted and weird associations, but basically, "0815" is a German expression for "unremarkable and average" (it sounds better in German, I swear), but 15 -> 13 because Creepy. 14-year-old-Guardy thought this was absolutely hilarious.

Oliver the Intern is called Oliver because I like the name and always wanted to name a character that. "The Intern" is a result of me describing him as "Oliver, the intern" so much I melted my brain a little and decided that the "[Name] The [Attribute]" name construction paralleling Sonic The Hedgehog was way too funny not to stick with it.

Absalom Hayes, Lionel Cerys, Angelica Maur, Evander Halley, Dahlia, Thalerion Nevarinae, Asciadavar Dustweaver and Ettore Settimo just kinda happened, usually while drawing the character for the first time.

Severin Lapointe was the result of scrolling through Behindthename/Behindthesurname until something stuck... I think. "Severin" may have been a random brainwave, I don't quite recall. Valère Lovell was also thanks to Behindthe(sur)name, though I knew from the beginning that I wanted something with "Val" as a given name, and Aurelius "Laurel" D'Angelo, too, has his name thanks to Behindthe(sur)name... except that time I had no idea what I wanted, so I spent hours scrolling through names until something finally stuck. 

For Herutaz, I knew I wanted something unusual that's also related to his general aesthetic - herutaz is a reconstructed proto-Germanic word for deer. The googling went along the lines of deer in Latin -> old English -> Old German -> googling around for words related to that -> herutaz. I originally almost went with Hircine (which is related to herutaz as a word, because language history is fun) before remembering that the Daedric Prince from Elder Scrolls exists... Also, when I said "I'm sure that German major will come in handy at some point", I sure didn't mean "I will use my language history knowledge to google for fun character names", and yet here we are.

Orephoron Sanguineus was a jerk. I started off with the Goetic demons as the obvious choice, but then decided that that was such a tired choice and I like my character names to be either unremarkably human (Gus, Jaime, Absalom, you get the idea) or actually unusual (Herutaz). Then I went to Behindthename, as per usual when I don't have a sudden brainwave while doing the art, realized that almost all "evil-sounding" names were really kind of iffy because I don't want to step on established mythology. Had Astrophel sussed out for a bit, but that name was invented for a 16th century poem. No copyright issues there, because 16th century, but it bugged me nonetheless. Then I did my usual Ancient-Language-Circuit of doom, but that didn't really bring up anything with a fitting sound AND meaning. Eventually, I took to Seventhsanctum's name generators, which also didn't work, but I eventually managed to figure out which sounds I wanted in that name, and then I Made Shit Up. And then slapped a Latin adjective on it, because why not. 

I go on baby name websites and look for hours until I find something that fits because I find it hard to think of good names on the spot (and sometimes I try to find something that fits their personality/design/inspiration). After that I sometimes go into a last name generator site, or just look for surnames with meaning that matches my character(s).

I often times name characters based on how they look and their personally. 

Flora for example is a  bright, happy soul which I associate with spring and summer which means there´s a lot of beautiful plants and flowers ^^

ouo I typically name my characters based on a character trait or an ability they may have. For Adelaide, though, I really liked the name. She actually didn't have a name for a while. BUT THEN FATE INTERVENED. Some years ago, I was working as a dog bather and cashier at a PetSmart and this lady came to my register with her dog. SHE WAS SUCH PRECIOUS CUTIE. Her name was Adelaide. So BAM!! That's how my precious child got her name lol

I guess for me, I love the name because she's had it for so long now. It sounds pretty and she's very dear to me. Also, it makes me think of that cutie patootie doggo

For Adelaide, much like when I made her, she didn't have a name either. It was only until she was rescued by a demigod did she receive her name. So, yeah, she loves her name because she loves the person who named her.