I first considered putting this in the roleplaying boards, but then I remembered the writing group board and people probably put more thought into a character for a story than for a game. So I was just kind of wondering how much time people put into naming characters and how important they find character names.
I am mostly wondering, because naming characters is sort of a big deal for me. I have a hard time getting a name I am comfortable with. I reuse names I make for stories for PCs a lot, mainly as it will take me sometimes weeks to find a name I like. I love it when there is already a name out there that matches a character, because it would take me so long to invent one I like. Its not even so much if the name is cool (stylish). That is something I always put a lot of merit in, but for names the whole etymology and meaning of the name is usually more important. I've actually looked into name etymology so much, and invented so many of my own names, I now can invent names from other names I've invented (with those invented names coming from real-world etymology).
In a few cases, I have actually invented a character due to a name I came up with, instead of the other way around. For example, while trying to find some names for these 5 devil characters, I came up with the name Ashtarot. I really like this name, and I've invented a character based on the name (rather than making a name to match the character as would be normal). I would actually say I am still developing this character, as I am currently RPing a character of the same name (I find myself doing this quite a bit, RPing a character that I would like to develop for stories).
For a very in-brief of the Ashtarot name, this is sort of how it went. While I was looking up various deities, demons, etc in my attempt to name the aforementioned devils, I was looking at the name of a goddess named Astarte. I found out that this name was also linked to several other characters, such as Astaroth and Ashtoreth. I wanted the new name to evolve from these, and came up with Ashtarot. But there should be a reason for it to evolve from the previous names to the new name, and so I had to look up the etymology for its new composite words as well (ash and tarot). This takes longer then it might sounds, because one word can lead to two words, etc and soon you are looking and dozens of words instead of just two. So after studying the previous names and the etymology of the composite words, I finally settled on a definition: "Lord Of The Immortal Undead", although Lady would probably be more appropriate, but I wanted a male character so its Lord. Also while making a character to match my new name, I've tried to tie his background into some of the other words that came up in the etymology (making the character almost a living example of how his name evolved in etymology).
Yeah, anyway, just wondering of anyone else has similar experiences while making up names.
