In modern or sci-fi games with humans I usually just go with real names. Other than that, I rarely use of those methods (at least on purpose - I have read thousands of names, and sometimes my subconscious will pull on an existing name by accident.) Existing characters already have stories, personalities, traits, and so on. I don't want my own name - I'm not playing me. That isn't me casting that spell, and if I want to get into that character, I don't want to start with that baggage (likewise friends and family.) I also care a lot about setting, so I don't want something reminding me of the real world. An alien named after a sports team? "Look out, Commander Shephard, it's Golden State Warrior!" WTF? And I certainly don't want my RPG party to include Mr. Immortal and Anti-Lad, nor is my barbarian Hercules, nor is my wizard Rupert Giles. Previous games? Very rarely, mostly because those names carry impressions from their first owner, and this is a new character. Eiken was a good guy, and a tough fighter. I'm sitting down to play a new character who may or may not be like that, so he's not Eiken. He's someone else.
A name suggestive of the character's best attribute (e.g., Guudshot, Stonebelly, Charisma)
That one I absolutely use if the setting makes it appropriate. Them dwarves gotta have their Stonebreakers and Roughelms, and it says something if your barbarian is 'Goral the Fleshrender.' Sometimes I'll translate the description into a race-appropriate language (Raudhauga is approximately old Norse for 'Redeye', for instance, which might work for a dwarf who drinks a bit too much.)
In a fantasy game or for aliens? After more than 40 years of tabletop RPGs, I'm pretty good at making names.
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Method 1: Often I'll start by playing with sounds.
Ok, half-orc character. Something orcish. I'll try some orcish sounding phonemes:
Gor urg blah rall blor gash mor har bag bolg gru
And then I'll play a bit with them.
Gor gash. Gorgash? What about
Gorbash? Borgash?
Urg blah. Blech, no.
Urglah? That's not bad.
Morgor. Too Tolkien. Morrall? No, sounds like a judgmental mushroom. Needs a hard consonant in there. Mortal? No, English word. Morkal? No, too Robin Williams and Warhammer.
Morgal!
Or
Dwarven character. Lots of old Norse sounds, largely thanks to Tolkien. His source material (the Poetic Eddas) list a huge number of dwarves, and gives me a lot of sounds to play with.
Dvelin.
Skjaldi.
Kolgar.
Or
Human character. Commoner? Short name, something that
could be a name in our world, but isn't (or at least not commonly - there are billions of us crawling around.) Lesse, we have Brad and Bram. Go through the alphabet until something sticks. Brab, Brac, Brad, Brae, Braf, Brag, Brah (come at me!), Brai, Braj, Brak, Bral, Bram, Bran (gone, thanks to JRRM), Brao, etc. Brac, Brak, Bral, and Brae might work (the latter for a woman.)
Not a commoner? Give 'em a few more syllables, or maybe a surname, nickname, title, lineage ("Brelman, son of Jarnod.")
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Method 2: Play with existing names. Look at the sounds of other characters in (wherever) with a 'feel' that suits me.
One campaign I was running needed a villain. He needed to be both an evil ass, and convincing as a friendly ally before being revealed. He was a spellcaster (secretly a necromancer.) I wanted a classic sounding character. I looked at Tolkien, who used the name (or affix) -gond a few times. I looked at Eddings, who had Belgarion, Belgarath, etc (Bel- was a sort of title for wizards.) I played around and ended up with
Balagond.
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Method 3: Working with an established setting. If I'm doing something in a known, established setting (let's say I'm playing Skyrim), I'll do the phoneme dance as in #1, but I'll start with the canon for that world.
So, that Skyrim character? Say they're a Khajiit. It's easy to find
Khajiit names, but I don't want to end sharing a name with an NPC, so I'll play with what's there. Here are the male Khajiit NPCs in Oblivion:
Bhisha, Dahlima, Dro'shanji, Hassiri, J'baana, J'Baasha, J'bari, J'Ghasta, J'mhad, J'riska, J'skar, J'zidzo, J'zin-Dar, Ja'Fazir, K'Sharr, M'aiq, Ma'Raska, Ma'zaddha, M'dasha, M'desi, M'dirr, M'raaj-Dar, Ranarr-Jo, R'vanni, Ra'dirsha, Ra'Jahirr, Ra'Jhan, Ra'jhera, Ra'jiradh, Ri'Bassa, Ri'Jirr, Ri'Zakar, S'drassa, S'rathad, S'razirr, S'shani, Urjabhi
Ok, J' S', or Ra' are good places to start. Double Rs and Ss (ss, rr). Lots end in -a or -i. Few Us.
Start with that:
J' _ _ _ _ ss -i J'arissi? Ra'Jissi? Ok, I'll check for those on that page. A quick search shows neither. Do they fit my character? Problem solved.
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It sounds complicated, but in practice it usually only take a few minutes, sometimes less. Not a huge investment when I'm going to spend a hundred hours trying to get a sense of this character. Of course, I've read a ton of fantasy, plus more than my fair share of mythology, legend, folklore, etc. in my life, so I have a substantial amount of material to draw on.
Hidden secret from that: Two of the names I listed there are actually stolen directly from Tolkien and mythology: Skjali and Eiken. Or, rather, Eikenskjaldi. Eikenskjaldi was listed in the Poetic Edda as one of the dwarves, along with (amongst others) Gandalf, Kili, Fili, Thorin, Gloin, Dori, Ori, etc. Tolkien combined two of them - Thorin and Eikenskjali, which translates as 'oaken shield' into 'Thorin Oakenshield.' I chopped it into two different names - a straight lift from mythology with a minor tweak.