Coming up with names

I've put different regions with cultures as a basis that looks like ours in my webcomic. Then I played with the different culture and mixed it.
So, when I give a name to a character, either it remembers where he or she comes from, or it's just a name that I liked. Sometimes, it goes for mythical or historical references.

I know a lot of people don't like the fact to name a character with a name meaning, but sometimes I find it nice. As long as it isn't too obvious, like @williamjbowles said.
I like anagrams too, I got two or three for family names (Tyrfing => Fyringt, the name of the heroine's mother. They also got a sword on their emblem).

Tbh, I use a lot of name generators and also babynames.com
I'll spend at least 30 minutes on one name, and even then I might eventually switch it if I think of a better name. Meaning isn't a huge thing for me unless I plan to do something with it in the story later

I usually don't worry about names, even leave my character's nameless, especially while writing. Only when I know exactly what name to give them do I ever give one. Usually I give them one that means something about their character, or better yet, something that means the exact opposite for an ironic feeling.

Also keep an eye out for a name that sounds good, that has a nice ring to it. (Ichigo Kurosaki, Edward Elric, Lag Seeing, even Monkey D. Luffy sound fun or excitin without being to exotic)

Other times, I just use normal names, just as placeholders. I don't like to use exotic names much, although I like to use names that are also other words. For example,

Spite:
verb
1.
deliberately hurt, annoy, or offend (someone).
"he put the house up for sale to spite his family"
synonyms: upset, hurt, make miserable, grieve, distress, wound, pain, torment, injure
"he did it to spite me"

Which I then spelled Spyte. He has a mentality not to want to offend anyone, so I gave a name that means to offend. Even if the name isn't real, it had a great ring to it. To me, outrageous names are sort of overused. You don't really hear the hero being named "john" or "carl" much. For another project, that I had designed but won't get to for some time, the main Character's name is Orson Smith. I liked the name Orson because it sounded like OSN, or old sin nature, and he was going to be a bit religious. Once again, irony, but with a normal-sounding name.

When I have trouble with that I often go to those websites that have all kinds of baby names xD good for women who are expecting and authors lol most of those sites tell you the meanings. One of my good friends writes stories and bases the characters off of his friends and in his recent story he gave his characters Latin names. So for example one of the characters he made was based off of me, I'm an artist and I'm pretty good with computers so he made a female character that is computer savvy that can find all sorts of information and he named her Ars which means art in Latin. Sometimes I name a character after I design them which is what I did for the main protagonist.

Interesting question.
I used to pîck a random word (or one that could have a link to my character's personality) in a foreign language dictionary (for me, Spanish and Italian), change/add a letter or 2, and that was it...
Now I avoid naming my characters as much as I can (my comic doesn't really need names anyway). But if I need to, I go on the web and choose from a list of common names.

I just picked the most generic names I could think of since my characters are meant to portray average soldiers and not be particularly exceptional.

As other people have mentioned, baby name sites are great for both common and more unique names.

I will suggest this though as it's something I've personally learned a lesson about when naming characters: Giving a character say, a pretty-sounding or kind of gothic name is all well and good, but I'd try to avoid going too far in their themes.

Ah, this is better shown than explained...

A decent 'dark' name: Damien Keiler
A bad 'dark' name: Damien Darkheart

A decent 'pretty' name: Liliana Smith
A bad 'pretty' name: Liliana Luna-Pearl

For my webcomic, I like to have meaningful name, that is to say names coming from words used in different language, that relate to the character's personality or features.

My method of doom : i chose a word i like in my own language, that describes well a character. For example, if my character is calm on the outside, but has a potential of destruction, I choose "ember" and I type it into Wikipedia. Then I open every single language with an alphabet I can read in a new tab. After that, I proceed to closing the translations that do not fit, because of the sonority, lenth or whatever. I end up with a couple of meaningful pretty words I can use as names for a character in particular.

For names I usually like to make them up, sometimes it is an actual name and other times its not. The reason I do this is so my characters are unique. However, if I am not getting an ideas for names I usually look one up and give them a name based on their personality or role in the story.

An example of one of my made up names is Zethero Chiever. This is the name of the protagonist of my current comic. After a closer look at his name it does symbolizes his role in the story. He has "hero in his name and he is a freedom fighter so I unconsciously placed his role in his name.

Well, the character names for Consolers are the same as the company names, so no problem there xD

As for my other characters (my anthros, who I haven't drawn in forever)... well, a lot of the time I really just make up most of their names. And when I say "make up", I mean "play around with some sounds and letters/keysmash down some letters and mess around with that until it sounds like a cool word/name". That's how my characters Chaletica and Derana got their names. As they are anthro animals in a made-up world, I don't feel like all of them has to be "standard" names (though some of them are, for those I just looked at various names and thought "yeah I guess that fits them", or just had a name pop up in my head.
As for last names... Usually a keysmash too. Except for Derana - her last name is Hanecco, which is the Japanese name of the Pokémon Hoppip - as a subtle reference to the fact that she used to be a Hoppip-anthro. Hey, it works with the rest of the names, so why not.

To be honest I don't know What ever pops in my head and I say "hm yes, they look like a So-n-so".
Some characters like Sage Forever from Death Prince I named because he's a kind of a zombie, with pale green skin, so Sage is another word for green and since he lives forever, well, that's where his last name plays in.

A lot of my other characters have really wacky names, like Sketaldaz from Hacheeachkee. I purposely make them sound strangely-foreign due to the fact it takes place on another planet. though I try to keep names originating from the same planet somewhat similar.

http://wordsmith.org/anagram/

you can come up with great stuff if you get a little creative

Real world, contemporary settings are quite easy, you just look through a baby name website until you hit something that works. Historical settings take a bit more research, but there are a surprising number of websites that have collected together examples of names from various cultures and time periods. Fictional settings are the most difficult because if you want to make up names and do it well, you need names of people from the same place to actually sound like they have roots in the same language. It takes a lot of planning, and you have to think about things like which sounds might be more common in male vs female names, whether you want the names to mean anything, the structure of a full name (how you want to use the first name, family name, any other indicators you want the name to contain) and lots of other factors. It can be a lot of fun if you like working with constructed languages though.

Two main characters of Outside the Box are called Danny O'Blake and Brian Rooks. O'Blake is supposed to be like oblique, as Danny is a "lateral detective". Rooks refers to the chess piece, which moves in straight lines. (which is why the 8tracks playlist is called Oblique/Castle!)

The Detective Inspector is called D, which is one of those names that was a place holder until I could think of a better one, but it stuck!

Malcolm is a reference to Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park, and Ms. Clump was the frumpiest name I could think of.

When I came up with names for my characters, I didn't put to much thought int it. So a while ago I was on a website looking for meanings of names. I typed in my characters names and surprisingly they all fit with that character. But that was just dumb luck, I put more effort now in names thinking about land of origin, family history, deeper meanings.

I'm with you on the not wanting to use names of those you know. A friend insisted I use her name in my first novel attempt and well, soon we weren't friends and I soon did not like the character, either! Ah, high school. But I learned my lesson there.

I use baby name books and websites like babynames.com. Depends on your genre. I hit up thrift stores and flea markets for older baby name books. They have cool, somewhat out-of-style names, which works for my fantasy comic (Spidersilk). I wanted to avoid very modern or common names, and also avoid making up too many of my own for fear they were hard to pronounce and/or remember.

For names I consider:

• meaning -- does it fit them perfectly? Kind of opposite? Their features? An emotion or trait?
• Ethnicity/culture (if applicable) -- consider for family and given names. Research commonality and naming methods for that culture
• nickname possibilites
• difficulty -- someone will mispronounce their name, but that is not a bad thing. Could be hard to remember
• cultural connections/nuances/history -- did someone famous have it? Were they great? Terrible? Is it religious? Would it be insulting for such a character to have this name? Are you trying to say something by using this name?
• variety -- don't give all your characters names with M at the beginning … unless you're trying to say something with that
• backstory -- if your character has an unusual name for your world in your comic, is there a reason?
• homage? -- if applicable. Maybe you just wanna pay homage to something. Make sure it is not an unusual name -- the thing you are paying homage to will always overshadow your character. So don't name your elf dude Fenris, that won't go over well. But you can look for names with Fen in them, for example.

I just dig up all the names that strike my fancy. I usually scribble an image of the character next to my list and try to determine what name fits him/her best.

Of course, it depends on what kind of comic you're going to do. For example, in my webcomic Bet on it, as it is a slice of life, it uses real names that I search in baby websites XD also, they're related to the character's origins/nationality/idon'tknowhowtoexplainmyself (???) like Hana, Noora, Hector... (although Bet on it isn't placed anywhere really). But, in my upcoming webcomic that I'll start working on this summer, as it's placed in nowhere, the names are totally made up: Ho, Giu, Za... (ok, they kinda have meaning. Giu comes from budgie > gie > giu because when I first drew this character when I was working in the design totally reminded me to a parakeet hahahaha. Ho and Za are also other known words cropped from spanish and english but I won't say the original words because it might be spoily).

And also, looking for a name that suits the character because of its meaning is also a really interesting thing to do!

I've used a variety of methods to choose names. Sometimes they relate to the character by meaning (sometimes as a sort of Easter egg), and sometimes I choose whatever just sounds right. For Demon of the Underground, the story takes place in a fictitious world below Chicago, and a large number of the supporting characters are named for Chicago streets. The trend started because I did a lot of my early brainstorming during long commutes to work while listening to the traffic report.

And what's the point if you can't have a little fun with it? Therefore, there is one lady in the underground named 75th...