pwah most of the time i think of names i like and try and couple it to the scenery

Yours would probably be something like hellis... uh i mean Lisandra Lavendell .. or something similar , Gwendrill os Avenstura ya know

Rolling the Scattergories dice several times.

Something befitting the setting/time period the game takes place in, obviously.

For fantasy settings I'll usually look up names from the European Middle Ages, and if the game is set in a specific country or region, like actual Holy Roman Empire-era Germany in Darklands or a Medieval Germany-inspired fictional (procedurally generated) territory in Battle Brothers I'll choose names specifically from that country or region/period of time.

For any other setting or time period (Sci-Fi or Science Fantasy like Warhammer 40K) it's pretty much entirely down to imagination and coming up with names that to my ear would sound appropriate and not too out of place when compared to the names of the NPCs the player character(s) are sharing the world/setting with.

If its a short game or I don't think I'll be very invested in my characters, then I have a set of "default" names that I typically use. For example, I typically name female knight/paladin type characters Jena; while Liam is my go-to name for male druid/ranger/nature-type characters; etc.

If I want to be light-heartedly creative, I'll use the first letter of the class name and pick a name with the same first letter. Wayne the Warrior, Cedric the Cleric, Devon the Druid, etc.

If I think I'll be more invested in the characters for a long time (Icewind Dale, Temple of Elemental Evil, etc.) then I'll go to www.babynames.com and do an advanced search to look up names from a particular culture and/or with a particular meaning, or look at their "Unique Baby Names" list. I know it sounds goofy, but you can find some pretty cool names very quickly on that site.

I have list of real life names for them
When it comes to character names I'm long time uninspired. I try to match feeling of name to feeling of class, like Saoirse for female druid or Charlotte for female bard.
And my characters got two or multiple names almost always, if possible. Like Charlotte Rosalie or Gwenllian Saoirse.

Good thread. I just realized I changed my approach quite a lot through life.

As a kid, I got into CRPGs and reading fantasy at the same time.

First I named characters after RL "celebrities" with the serial numbers filed off (think Bobson Dugnutt except mostly F1 drivers with a female singer here and there to break up the sausage party).

When I read more fantasy, I started naming them after fantasy characters (even if the characters in question were present in the game as NPCs - bah, impostors!)

A couple more years, I was using character names and personalities from my own stories.

When I played my first online game, this didn't sit right with me (for privacy reasons, too, but also because it'd retroactively make my story character a self-insert), so I just borrowed the unusual name of the author of a non-fiction book I liked and filled in the blanks when playing.

This is what I do now in singleplayer, except the names can be more fanciful because no one except me needs to spell or remember them.

I usually name them after fictional or real examples of their type. Like a vampiress will always be named Carmilla for me, a chinese warrior type will be Lü Bu, a satanic magician will be Gilles de Rais, etc.

This is genuinely tricky. Every year I think to myself "I'm gonna start a new character in Guild Wars 2". Then I get stuck for a long time at the character creation screen not knowing what to name my Sylvari, and eventually close the game.

Depends on the genre (fantasy, sf), but usually I don't have problems summoning up names from scratch - could be because decades of DMing pen and paper RPGs and coming up with NPCs on the fly is good training for something like that. I sometimes do that for more classic party-based games, like Bard's Tale or Wizardry... Wahnfried the Warrior, Turino the Thief, Megestra the Mage, Bernatrix the Bard... :-)

If it's a "serious" RPG I usually go full vanilla with your regular run of the mill names. If it's anything else I swing to the complete opposite and really let lose my imagination.

E.g. for former I'd make a noble knight Sir Aaron Greywood, and the latter a fighter Swarnold Archeneger von Klink.

Keyboard walk. Especially since (for example) in the original SaGa I & II for the GB, you had a generously totalled four characters.

And sometimes I wonder why the naming screens give you access to nonsense symbols.

Fortunately, the game I'm thinking of replaying is the SaGa 2 *remake*, which fortunately increased the number of characters allowed in names (even if you're playing without the untranslated patch, like I've actually done (on in imported cart)).

The WonderSwan Color version of SaGa 1 still allows only 4 characters (and that version has bugs that aren't in the original, so I don't like that version, though at least they fixed the RNG).

(Side note: I think that Square's WSC remakes weren't well coded. FF1 was at least decent, but FF2 and SaGa 1 have changes that make the game worse (spells level slower in FF2 WSC), and FF4 has some of the bugs that made it into the GBA 1.0 version; I have no idea how the Romancing SaGa port is, as the only version I've played is the PS2 remake, which is very different.)

(By the way, in case it matters, I've already chosen my party; it's 4 robots.)

FF1, which only had 4 characters, they were FITE, WITE, THEF, etc. Games that have default names, I almost always leave them the default (or let the random generator generate). I rarely specify my own names unless I have to. When I do, I pick a theme ("Rivers in Europe" or "American Mountain Ranges") and craft length-appropriate names from them.

ttRPGs, names are important and a giant part of character creation. I carefully select one that fits the persona/character/background, often using lists of real-world names from certain ethnicities.

You force me to name my party members, you better believe my brain will clock out at "Roguey McRogueface", "Healy McHealface", "Knighty McKnightface" or "Bob 1-5"...