I couldn't find this topic in the comic section, so I thought I'd ask it:
How do you come up with the names of your comic characters? DO they have to mean something or do you just give them any old name?
What are some good comic character names and why?

Bob, Phil, Ted, Debbie, Jenny...
I use average everyday names (average everyday names that fit the character's personality/traits).

I don't use anything too exotic.
behindthename.com is a good site for name ideas, it's where I get some of mine.

I just use whatever name comes to mind, though I try to make it fit the general run of the story. Sometimes, such as with the real (unrevealed) name of the main (unrevealed :P) villain in CnC, it's a vibrant contrast of their character, just for giggles :D

Azuu - My brother came up with this one; it's basically a derivative of the name "Azriel"

Elijah - Suggested as an angelic sounding name by my English teacher in High School. Technically it comes from Elijah Wood, of Lord of the Rings fame. The fact that it was also the name of a prominent angel was purely coincidental.

Fraja - Another one from my brother; he took the word "Raja" and added an "F" to it to make it more Feminine.

Amaliel (Amy) - Basically I just looked up angel names in a book I have until I found one that sounded like a girls' name.

Zock - Azuu's brother; his name is derived from Zack.

Frantz - Fraja's brother; he's from France, and I found a bit of stupid humor in that his name sounded so much like France.

Rudasor - Since he's based on Rodney Dangerfield, I looked up in my trusty angel book to try and find a name reminiscent of "Rodney", but this was the closest I could find.

Rojo - Back to my brother again, I was trying to think of a name for the character, and he recommended Rojo, since it's similar to Fraja, but is also the Spanish word for "Red" (since he has red skin). I'm not sure if people are reading it right, though, because technically it's pronounced "Row Joe".

Izza - Since Azuu and Zock both have "Z"s in their name, I figured that could be something of a theme for the characters. So I just sat down for an hour or two going through names in my head until I settled on something that sounded a bit feminine and cute.

Carmelia - Fraja's Mom; the name came about because I wanted something distinctly different from Fraja, since a lot of people were under the impression she'd have a name starting with an F. My roommates and I were discussing it for a long time, and Carmelia was the best we could come up with. I'm still not entirely happy with it, since it's a bit reminiscent of "Carmilla", which is apparently some kinda vampire thing.

Father Diego Martin - I'm not sure how to put accent marks on stuff, but he's supposed to have an accent on the I in "Martin". Anyway, I was watching Ice Age, and I really liked the name "Diego" and decided to change the character to reflect that. Originally he was going to be named "Garret".

Orzo, Devourer of Souls - For those who don't keep track of stuff like this, "orzo" is actually a type of pasta. I just thought it had a nicely demonic ring to it.

The Flying Killer Deathsnake - Her name is basically just what she is.

I get names from all over the place - whether or not I'm looking for a name with a meaning depends on the character. If the character has a certain aspect that rules them I might look up something related to that. A character named Aurelia ( "gold" ) from one of my down comics had a strong connection to the sun. Sometimes I make up names, but then I have to Google them before I use them because inevitably they'll end up being some horrible word in another language e_e

That kind of thing's really interesting Ink. I love that you went into such detail, it's really informative. ^^
I'll have a try at something similar:

Pinky: It's a nickname because of her chosen hair colour. She has a real name, but it's just not important.

Cc: She's named after the character in the song "See, see Rider". It's an old blues number, but I like the 60's version by The Animals. It's a good name with lots of potential meanings, especially since she rides a motorbike. "Cc" also stands for "cubic centimetres" which is a measure of fuel capacity of a engine I think? And therefore a common way of talking about the power of bikes? Anyway, for her it's short for the rather girly name of "Cecilia".

Rasovich: He's the captain of the battleship Buccaneer. It's just made up. The "Ras" part reminds me of "Rasputin", "rascal, and red. "Vich" is a common Slavic name suffix, it means "town" or something... He comes from that part of the world so it fits.

At the moment I have a few more characters; Betty, Collin, and Dave. Betty is a nice name, easy to shorten and one of the name you might find on the side of an American WW2 heavy bomber. Collin is a dorky name, with an extra "l", and I find it extra funny because someone as apparently bright an accomplished as General Colin Powell preferred his name to be pronounced the same way as an icky body part, (I believe that was due to some silliness when he was training to be an officer? I dunno.) Dave is just a dull, boring name for a dull boring character...
Not to cast aspersions on real people who have those names! You bring your own personalities to them.

My favourite tool is my baby name dictionary. ^_^ I generally like to have one around, and have caused a few odd looks from friends and family when buying them.

I left my latest one in England, though, so now I have to find online ones, and they're just not as good as flciking to random pages until you find something that fits. :(

I think I named Annabelle Harper because... well, she harps on people and she's kind of a harpy. :) Annabelle though because that's a nice pretty old-fashioned name, and she needed one of those too.

Most of my other characters though are just names I've come across and liked the sound of. Davis Wilkins is a normal-sounding name for a normal guy. Bruno Tavlin, I got the last name Tavlin from someplace, but Bruno makes him a little unusual.

I do better at naming things as what they are than with people names though. Like Golem. Or, in WILT, all the characters were named Big Sister, Little Sister, Blonde Boy, Girl with the Pixie Haircut, etc...

My upcoming comic I'm trying to take a bit more care with the character names. So many times I see a comic or story and just wince at the names. (Wet Moon is horrible for that, it isn't a very good comic anyway, but all the characters' names are things like Cleopatra Lovedrop... come on.) I need names that reflect each character's... character, but also remind people of something I want them to be reminded of. :) I'll probably give up on that after a while because names end up being such a subjective thing...

In HVH, the only randomly made up names are Jim, Victoria, and Em.
Mostly, they all get their names from biblical roots, but some get their names from other stuff (Umbra). The Archangels, Gabe, Ralph, and Mike all have shortened names. Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael.

Grim and Bob has just random names.
Exect Ash. His name is a pun and an Evil Dead ("Ash N. Soot" )

The only real character in Teenology is Dr. Knowitall. I think that name is pretty obvious.

As for Deus...
All the heroes will be named after stones. So, if you see a character whose name is derived from a type of rock, he/she will probably be a main character.
The Nations of Attomia and Babulina are named after Empires. Ottoman and Babylon.
Umbramagus is fairly obvious: "Dark Mage" or "Dark Master".
Lichenric is just made up so I could have a good reason to call a character "Lich".
I won't go on as the comic is fairly new.

I don't technically write my comic, but for one I do come up with a lot of the back story which will be later worked into the comic. I have named a few characters and for the most part I take Native American names. I also tend to look at the meanings to make them appropriate to the character.

I have done a bit of creative writing on my own, as well as some scriptwriting for animations. In most cases, I use a more contemporary setting. For those works I just go with names that sound good with the character.

When I'm naming my pets I look at mythology or Greek/Latin names and I try to give the pet a name that is either short, or can be shortened into something cutish.

I ask my readers to give me names they come up with. Surprisingly, some do give pretty interesting names. Other times, I like giving French or French sounding names. I'm probably one of the odd people here who's interested in French stuffs.

Hmmm, FanDanGo has some interesting ones...

You may have noticed if you read the comic, that the magic and sword draws in FanDanGo uses circle-shaped runes. Each one has a design, a meaning and pronunciation. In fact, the name of the comic 'Fan' 'Dan' 'Go' is made up of three runes (hence how the title banner is written). I actually made a HUGE number of these runes before starting the comic, as I wanted a sort of consistant world feel. I decided that many characters would have names made up of these runes, and that other characters would generally have european-sounding names. Particularly french names. Look out particularly for names ending with 'kia', rin' and 'on' as these are almost certainly runic names.

Rekki was already named 'Rekki' in rough drafts before I made the runes. I decided that 'Rekki' sounded short for something, and decided on 'Elrekia', which is made from the runes 'Elre' -ambition and 'kia' -Woman. Her middle name is 'Susan', a little homage to one of my favourite heroines, Susan Sto-Helit from 'Soul Music' and 'Hogfather' by Terry Pratchett.

Rocket's name was created in reverse. I created her with the name 'Rocket' and realised it made more sense as a nickname, so gave her the name 'Rochette', which doesn't really suit her too well, so it made sense she'd go by her nickname.

Juliet, obviously is another european name, and it's also a homage to Juliet Cesario, a really awesome voice actress who played Belldandy in the old OVA of 'Oh My Goddess!' since Juliet's character design with the sloping eyes and the bangs was inspired by Belldandy.

Subo is two runes. 'Su' -Big/Mighty and 'Bo' -Tree. For some reason people are always mis-writing or mis-pronouncing his name as things like 'Subi' or 'Tsubo'. It's NOT a Japanese name!

Sarin is again, two runes 'Sa' -dilligent/hard working and 'Rin' -girl/child. I only later found out that 'Sarin' was a type of deadly gas... 0_o' Her middle name is 'Haruko' which is, apart from other members of Sarin's family, the only Japanese name in the comic. It means 'Spring Child'.

I tend to find names in random places depending on the story or I just play with sounds in my head till something interesting pops up.
Narou is a play on "garou" with rou pronounced like row; both of which mean wolf in French and Japanese (as opposed to ookami which also means wolf). N sounded best so I replaced the g with n so it wouldnt seem so obvious how lame the meaning was.

I also used to have a bizarre Japanese dictionary program that had weird random entries. One was "gobudameshii" and it said "killing by inches". I kinda doubted the authenticity of that meaning or that as an actual word, but I liked it so much that I used it for a character's name. Now that I look it up, I see that definition again.. and its a band's name -.- ....... that.. kinda sucks....

ONN is mostly just random Japanese names I like... since its about feudal Japan *shrug*
I have one character designed for it who will be a minor character named after Rokusaburo Michiba though. (He was the first/best Iron Chef Japan ^o^)

Lament of Lycidas is inspired by Paradise Lost. Instead of calling him Lucifer, I thought Lycidas (the the "y" pronounced like a "u" as in many European languages)was a nice, different name, but it comes from another work by John Milton. My character has a brother named Emmanuel (probably got that from Giant Robo), but after reading a wiki entry on an obscure Roman emperor, I decided to use the name Lycinius.
Other characters: Ghamuret (from the father character in the old German hero epic Parzival by Eschenbach), Baezel (basically a play on beelzebub and bezel which is a jewelry term meaning circular shape/setting/that round part of your watch face that turns), and Azraellah (well thats obvious.. the last part is similar to..well, you figure it out..)

All of my major human characters are named after Gay Porn Stars. No joke. Evan, Caleb, Chad, and more that haven't been introduced yet.

My robot's name, Riz0, and the device that he carries, called the E-Turner, are an anagram. Rearrange the letters and it spells the name of my Comic, Return Zer0, with an i left over. But upside down it's an exclamation point!

And the Aliens name, Eff, was from me and a friend of mine trying to figure out how to spell the letter "H" how it sounds.

Let's see...

The baby name book is an awesome tool. I love names with meanings to them. I on purposely avoided Japanese names not that they aren't bad or anything it's just it's overused with manga webcomics by nonJapanese. I followed the Japanese pun naming style though. A lot of my characters names have to do with puns.

The Planet Closest to Heaven

Pepe is after pepino which is cucumber in Spanish. And cucumber sounds like "cute-comer". It's cute and it came! Also most of the beginning of the TPCTH story was written in Spanish class(didn't help my grade^^; ). Thought the name Pepe sounded adorable.

Starla is two words put together Star and la. Star because she is the star of the comic and la because it goes with the note "la" and the character plays a recorder.

Scout is a hick name. One of Cletus Del Roy's kids from the Simpsons is called Scout. A hick name goes well with the setting of the story (in the woods... out in the middle of no where...) Also looked in the baby name book, Scout is said to be an American origin name which seemed interesting at the time. It also seemed like an easy name to remember. Not many other characters in comics are called Scout.

Lukaraiah is after an old Halloween cartoon I saw as a kid. Thought the kid that opened the Grinch's Pandora box was called Lukaraiah. Demi(same character) was a spell in Final Fantasy. To me it sounds like demon and it could mean a part of a bigger whole or incomplete. Luka(her nickname) has no relation to the creator of the Kagerou. It probably came from one of the towns in FF10 I was playing at the time when I was coming up with ideas.

Nameless and Faceless. Like reason and rhyme. The names went well together. I was kinda making fun of myself thinking this webcomic is pretty much unknown so it's nameless and faceless.

Speedy Mcnee was a main character of many of my previous stories in middle school. It was supposed to be a stupid name. (I always used to say it in a funny high pitched voice.) He was a cool flying shark character in the old stories. Thought it be funny if I kill "the hero" right away in TPCTH.

For DE
Saturno is after the painting; Saturn Devouring one of his Children by Goya. (In the original language of the painting the name was Saturno.) It goes with the cannibalistics of the Demon Eater story. Actually I based the story after that painting.

While discussing cliches with a friend of mine we got to talking about ridiculous Japanese naming and pop-culture references. We decided the Walrus Man should be named GuGu Gatsu, just for fun.

Pornography for the Soul was started back in my high school paper, and all the characters were hyperbolized from my classmates so I used their names (with permission).

I did a sci-fi comic a whiles back and named the main characters Aclin and Chassa after the Associated Colorado Library Network (ACLiN) and the Colorado High School Athletics Association (CHSAA).

I prefer to just find names. When a character's name holds too much significance my mind spend too much time drawing connections and not enough time on the story.

Hum... my stories (FIGHT and FIGHT 2) which are offline atm, consist of characters who gave themselves names (for a plot reason). Basically I followed a few rules when I did this:

(1) This is not a "superhero self-name" situation. So absolutely no stupid "cool" superhero names which double as adjectives or nouns, such as Blackhawk or Killjoy or some crap.

(2) No Jpnese names whatsoever, since this is not a Jpnese situation. Doesn't matter how cool Jpnese names can be (since you can link random cool poetic words together in Jpnese names, which is cool to you if you understand their meanings).

(2) Naming schemes will be similar to names air force pilots give themselves. Which don't have to be descriptive, and are sometimes degratory if the person is a junior member.

(3) Naming schemes will be similar to online names, which often appear random but have their own unique insight to the person.

(4) Names are often practical. But the women characters tend to add a little bit more poetry when giving themselves and each other names.

Well, I have two different stories in completely different settings, so the naming doesn't follow a general trend.

In King Me!, though, I tend to gear more towards French names or at least names that sound French. Aimery, Ami, Loxuis, Nicolas... Unless I want to hint they're from a certain decent, of course, which would be the case of Minas and Tynan who are supposed to be Irish.
Usually, I look for the meaning of the names as well to make sure they fit the character, but I admit to sometimes liking a name so much I don't care what the meaning is. That's what happened with Aimery, although he is a prince, and his name means "King of Work" I believe... So I guess it could work? >.>;
Loyal's name had to do with meaning... It's obvious what it means.

In Deus Ex Machina, though, most of the names come from Norse mythology as a majority of the cast are going to be all them lovely Norse gods and goddesses. But for the names of all the characters who aren't one of these deities, just complete fantasy sounding. Main character's name is Saistyria...? Yeah, just odd jazz like that.

I just like to play around with words and sounds until I come up with things that sound like good names. Also, I think about the attributes of a person or pet or whatever and try to form a name based on syllables of their descriptive words.

Kari Tyrell - I wanted a two-syllable name (don't ask why, it just seemed appropriate for the character), and I had just finished watching an episode of Mythbusters, so I named the character after Kari Byron from the show. "Tyrell" is a variation of "Captain Terrell" from Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Kahn. He's the poor guy who suffers and dies to demonstrate how dangerous Kahn is... Starfleeet should have known better than to start dressing their captains in red.

Daniel Qian - He's a Christian, brought up in a Christian household, so I decided that his parents probably would have given him a good, solid, Biblical name. "Daniel" seemed as good a choice as any. My limited research revealed that "Qian" is a fairly common Chinese surname.

Vaegyr Ward - Before I started CD, I was writing a Fantasy novel, and I love inventing fantasy character names. Vaegyr Ward is such a name.

Larissa Ward - I met someone named Larissa many years ago, when I was still in High School. I loved the name then, and still do.

Hal Grisdale - "Hal" from 2001: A Space Odyssey and "Grisdale" drawn randomly from a list of names in my Year 7 class at high school.

Whisper - For many years now I've wanted to have a character named "Whisper", it's such a wonderfully evocative word. With CD I finally saw an opportunity to make it happen.

Ring - "Ring" was to have been the name of a minor character in my novel, but he never made the story, so I reused the name for a cameo in Chapter 3.

Commodore Adelaide Pearson - A couple of my friends have named their daughter Adelaide, and I basically pulled "Pearson" out of a hat.

Mr Creed - I knew I wanted him to be only known as "Mr *something*", to make him an enigma, so I just tried a few random words until I found one which I liked.

Sarah (Control) - Since she looks so unusual, almost alien, when she's plugged into the mainframe, I wanted to give here a very ordinary, unassuming name. I like contrast.

i just wake up and make it up. its all bout the personality of your character not the name. in my comic destiny faith i just named my character alex. my name

Let's see...

Kate was named after a girl who went to my middle school. Real life Kate was the really emphatic person and I stole her name and bits of her personality for comic Kate. I'm also just a big fan of that name.

Amy was named after a minor character on Buffy, an on again off again villian who had magical powers. While my comic was originally inspired by Buffy, my characters aren't really reminiescent of that. My Amy is completely different than her namesake.

Raven was just named Raven because it's a fairly gothic and villianous sounding name. Most people assume it had something to do with the Teen Titans, but it doesn't. It just sounded like a dark name.

Nick was originally Rick, and I planned him out as a minor character. Rick is a nice guy I know, my parent's friend, but perpheral to my life. I chose the name because it reflected how I intially viewed his character. As I got fonder of Nick, I swapped the R for an N, because I like the name better.

Ella was intially the main character in a comic called Oz High, where all of the characters were derivative of Wizard of Oz characters. She was the Wicked Witch of the West, or as she is known in the book Wicked, Elphaba. I just shortened her name and bingo, there we were. Her last name is West as a nod to her origin.

WOW!! Magickmaker, it's interesting that one of your characters was named after a person you knew in middle school!!! Because that's how I got my main character's name, too!!! We were friends, kind of. I was a brat when I was younger... so I was very antagonistic towards this kid named Tom, even though I thought he was awesome. We'd have drawing competitions, and one of our competitions he drew a military tank and I drew a unicorn and we were like, "uh... who won?" (because how do you compare the two?!) He was a really nice, sensitive emo-kid, and for some reason I was thinking about him and about seventh grade in particular and how much it sucked, and then I was like, "omg misfit assassins!!!"

my other characters have more etymylogically meaningful names, though.

King: he's the leader! also, it's short for Kingsley, which in the movie The Life Aquatic (I <3 wes anderson!!) was the name Steve wanted to give to Ned. So it kind of has a nice feeling in my soul.

Leif: ... ... not much thought here. He has plant powers. ^^

Zombie: ... erm... he regenerates. But he has a lot of different names with a lot more significance. "savior machine" is (a david bowie song first and foremost) a way of showing the dehumanization.. of... uh... it makes sense in my head!! how people viewed him as a weapon rather than a person, and idolized him and feared him at the same time, like he was an angry god or something. And his given name is Finnegan. Like "fin" "again", the end happening again and again, which to me signifies immortality. Also the book "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce is about the repetition and cyclical nature of things-- the last line forms a sentence that is completed by the first line. ALSO "Finnegan's Wake" (with an apostrophe, ho-ho!) is an Irish ballad that talks about someone named Tim Finnegan who dies, and during his wake someone spills whiskey on him and he comes back to life. Yeah, I guess I spent too much time thinking about Zombie's names. .. sorry..

Erika: It signifies "warrior"... according to those baby-naming books, which I used to read like crazy.

Eve: Well, she has a snake! so it's like, Bibly!

Flipper: Flipper's not his real name. (dun dun dun!!! Can't spoil his real name though, which is fraught with really cool symbolism and actually highlights the main theme of my whole comic!!)

Mr. St. Martin: St. Martin is the patron saint of soldiers, named after Mars, the god of war. He's the precipitator of almost all the violence that happens in the comic.

Suzy: there's a character in Zatch Bell named Suzy. Which is irrelevant but it's where I got the name. (she's not introduced *yet* but she will be in like five to ten pages!)

Rydel6
All of my major human characters are named after Gay Porn Stars. No joke. Evan, Caleb, Chad, and more that haven't been introduced yet.

And the Aliens name, Eff, was from me and a friend of mine trying to figure out how to spell the letter "H" how it sounds.

gay porn stars?!!?! hahaha! awesome...?

Whoa, trying to begin to comprehend the "spell 'H'" thing made my head hurt.

I think I've answered this question every single time it's come up in a forum, so I might as well do it again.

Dasien - Name due to jibberish. Sort of a bastardization of the word "dashing", as in heroic.

Michelle Knight - Like the name Michelle. The last name is fairly self-explanatory.

Parker Lynn Bailey. - Like the name Parker. Her last name is a nod to the Bailey character of WKRP in Cincinatti. My best friend's middle name is Lynn. It seemed to complete the name.

Lord Crimson - Well, the color crimson, obviously. Crimson is a pretty cool shade of red, and it's a cool name for a color, so I used it.

Neuros - What else would you name a brain master?

Gooch - This isn't what the urban dictionary says, but gooch is a mobster slang. Please don't look it up in the urban dictionary. It... it's not good.

Max - Max sounds like the name of a subordinant to me. Someone whose name could be barked out and ordered repeatedly.

Nare Duelle - She's a ne'er do'ell.

Lionel Stag - The alpha male who never seems to have a date.

Palody - Japanese parody.

Marshall Brody - Named after Marshall Brodien.

Dave - Sounds like a stoner name to me. Daaaaave... Would have been Steve if not for the Dell PC dork, and he WAS a stoner.

I've really enjoyed the latest storyline, names-wise. :D

The ghost crew of the calamity were fun. I decided each of them (aside from the captain) would have a descriptive word, and then their first name. So I just picked a bunch of combinations at random, and came up with Mad Grey, Mysterious Simon, Hook-Handed Pete, and Big John. I was struggling for a 5th, and then I realised the only glowing ghostly colour left available was pink. That made the OBVIOUS choice "Pink Jacob" and gives me a wealth of jokes from which to choose. ;)

It's also given me the chance to namedrop some historical and legendary figures. I've used Maynard's name in passing (the man who killed Blackbeard), and plan to use him perhaps as a character later on. I've got Blackbeard's Head in there, and his Head Zombie is called Hornigold.

Hornigold was the name of a pirate captain under whom Blackbeard started out. I like the idea of him working for Blackbeard as an undead sailor- it leaves a potential story untold in the comic, just for me. ^_^ I like to think that when Hornigold (who had turned himself in and been pardoned) went missing at the end of his recorded life it was because Blackbeard, evil sod that he was, had captured the ship of his old captain and taken him prisoner, and that now they're all dead, Hornigold is forced to serve him for eteeeerrrrrrnity. ^_^

I'm actually having trouble thinking of a name for a new demon character in my comic. I was thinking "Mas", but I'm not sure. I'm open for suggestions.

Try and fit a "Z" in it. Z is a nice demoney letter. Like, instead of "Mas", he'd be "Masz".

You could just call him "Terbator"... Or maybe Terbator could be Mas's friend?

lolz

Hornigold is a brilliant name!

I quite like it msyself, Ozone. That's why I gave it to the Head Zombie Pirate (apart from Blackbeard).

History is the best place to find awesome names. ;)