I tend to name my characters whatever I want to without regards as to what others will think (critics mind you). Sometimes I name character by the way a last and first name sound together or by meaning. There are some names I've made up but they go into the fantasy setting or if in a real-world setting a character has a fantastic name as a nickname thus it doesn't harm in the long-run as it would in the real world as a given name.

I... am really bad at thinking of names. Which sucks since I like to write a lot, so I usually end up picking names of kids from my old school >>

For example, I've been working on a story taking place in the 1770's since October/November in 2008, and it took me literally five months to think of a name for my main charatcers. Molly Evans and Patrick Conner. It took an additional two months to think of a name for my secondary character: Thomas Collins.
If the name 'Thomas Collins' sounds familiar to you, I thought of Thomas before thinking of his last name. 'Collins' is just his working last name xP
The only character in my story that had a name from day one is Annabeth, who turned out to be the most useless character I made for the story. Every character (all secondary characters D: ) except Molly, Patrick, and Thomas had a name from day one. All the names were just names I liked/wanted to have in my story because those characters weren't important at all and their names didn't have to matter xP

There are only two characters (out of 50 secondary characters mentioned once with their own names) with meanings behind their names. I had to look them up on one of those name websites xP
Ayomide - 'My joy has come/arrived' It's African, from Nigeria I believe. I originally wanted her name to mean 'shy', but I couldn't find any African names with that meaning, so I found this name and it turned out to work perfectly with her character xP
Ekwueme - 'He says, he does' Also African, from Nigeria. I originally wanted his name to mean 'hope', but... I couldn't find that so I settled for Ekwueme xP

Bah... I had this crazy idea to take ghetto (aka poor Black) names and further modify them into a culture all it's own to add to an Urban Fantasy setting/story I'm doing.... but then, there'd be a lot of backlash for that. :|

Why would there be backlash? It's a fantasy world. Honestly, a lot of fantasy books have names that sound black. You should definitely do it!

Hmm... well the politics of "Black names" gets to me. Truly, I should do whatever I want within reason, but sometimes I stop and internalize these negative reactions.

Alright. I'm going to write. I have plenty of ideas, a new word processor and no interruptions.

I love using the name "Ella Leighton Van Holff".
She's the rich, beautiful Queen Bee of the school and is rather clever and headstrong. :3
I also use the name "Michaela Evans".
She's the simple, nice and good-natured character.
No copies. D:<

I love baby names sites, it's there I find great names. The ones I've used that really inspire me are Raven, Skyler, Raine, and Brookyln.

haha I went through a phase there I loved elemental inspired names x)
like: Flow, Storm, Krystal, Sakura, Skye

Then for some reason I liked names that started with the letter 'r' XD
Rei, Ray, Reina, Rain, Ronald, Rina, Ryna

now, now they're just random... LOL