One of my more devoted readers asked a question the other day and prompted this post on character names. Presently I'm reading a book on the craft of writing characters by Orson Scott Card (here) and although I've not yet gotten to a chapter on names, I can tell folks what I do.
Basically, I don't let it bother me. I throw in a place holder name and drive on with the writing. I file that sucker in the back of my mind for later and keep on working the story. Invariably my mind back dwells on and chews on that name until it spits out something more useful and hopefully better. When it does it is always an ephiphany.
The other thing I've done is to peruse the baby name generators (my favorite is here ) and look at clever names that might be coming back into fashion. Additionally, foreign language dictionaries are good sources. Find a characteristic that you want to emphasize in your character, find that word in a foreign language and see if it makes a decent name. Kind of a nefarious way of telling the reader of its import.
I will see if Mr. Card agrees with my methods in the upcoming chapters, but so far it's worked for me.
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