Naming characters

I know that some people don't spend a ton of time naming their characters — as evidenced by players with names such as "Ihealukill" and "Orczpwn" in the battlegrounds — but for me, the name is intrinsic to the character. Maybe it's my stifled, repressed role-player coming out (poor thing), but I spend more time laboring over the right name for my characters than I do choosing the right appearance (and I spend far too much time on that).

I don't really have a set way of naming my characters.

Ideale's name was from my list of "I want to try this class/starting zone, so let me make a throwaway character" names, mostly pulled from mythology. I am glad I picked that one, though, as it fits her quite well — it's very blood elfy — and it's really a gorgeous name. Although, honestly, I probably ought to have taken herbalism for her instead of mining; Ideale is the goddess of the harvest. (Four of my defunct Alliance characters got their names the same way. One of the names, Mayari, I'd love to reuse, but it seems a very night elfy name to me.)

Ahami was one of my characters from Materia Magica. It's a name that, as far as I know, I made up, though I probably heard it somewhere. I don't know why I picked it for my troll shaman, other than that it sounded like it could be a troll's name and I missed it. It fits her better than it ever did my MM character, though. (Tshaya, my draenei hunter, was also named for an old role-playing character.)

Daj and Kresha were also made up, mostly just playing with sounds. Daj was a variant of a character I made up for a series of short stories I wrote in high school, named Daija — she was the incarnate of fire. Since Daj was originally a shaman, it seemed appropriate. Now she's a hunter, of course, and again, the name doesn't quite fit. Daija didn't sound trollish enough to me, so I ditched some letters. Kresha just sounded nice and seemed fitting for an orc.

Onashne — I have to admit, I was playing with the name generator on the character creation screen and liked it so much I had to make a character with the name.

Gabi, the little shadow priest who will probably be reborn as a death knight in the expansion, was named because "gabi" means "evening" — I knew she was going shadow from the beginning. Too bad I hate playing a priest.

I mostly wrote this because I'm constantly curious as to how others name their characters, and assume everyone else is, too. *whistles innocently*