Character names - unique or everyday?

I followed Rowling's view. Keep a database of names. I have several hundred last names. I have several hundred girls. and another several hundred boys first names. I have them categorized into antagonists and protagonist names (first names only). Many names I created on my own. I do not like to take away from the flow of writing, so I created these databases beforehand.

The best scheme is ingenuity and creative thinking which is not thought in any educational institution on Earth even though some claim to to get the government findings but it is all a lie. Next is line fantasy which is the faculty of your brain to imagine unimaginable again which is not possible without appropriate stimulus that are aplenty.
There are more.
You can go by way of celebrities and use cardinal directions as Kim Kardashian named her daughter North West whereas when rappers are at it you've got 2 chainz, Ne-yo, 50 Cent and the like.Varieties are abundant mostly mediocre .

It depends if you create your names for a SciFi/ fantasy place or you are going for a country's and a certain historical period's names. If the later, get accurate. If the first, fantasy rules!

And Hermione was a popular name in the 17-th to 19-th centuries, both in England and France. There were ships on this name too...

This may sound trite, but I make them fit the story and location. Gabladorius Encalviar Recondelicly from South Boston just isn't as realistic as Angus O'Reilly. Neither is truly generic, like Bob Stevens would be, but one is at least a wee bit more realistic.

Jeff

This sounds silly, but I feel like my main characters tell me their names. I start seeing a person in my head, and the sounds of a potential name come with the images. Sometimes I go through a few possibilities before I find the one that feels right. I love baby name books and have a head full of both ordinary and exotic possibilities, so that doesn't hurt.

For instance, when I started planning my WIP, I knew the MC was a tough, scrappy girl whose first name started with H. It just felt right. I considered Hester and Hedwig, and then I remembered Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, so she became Hedda. It's far from a common name in the US, but I can see some educated parents choosing it, especially to match a Scandinavian last name.

For a book I'm planning now, I thought for a while the heroine was named Evelyn, Evie for short. She's a tall girl who feels self-conscious, and I wanted her to have a nickname that exacerbates that by suggesting smallness. But then Edith/Edie popped into my head, and I'm convinced that's her name. It sounds demure and/or cute, the opposite of everything this girl is. But it also reminds me of Edith Wharton, who was pretty awesome.

In my debut there's a character who's suspected of being a serial killer. I knew early on that his name had to be Dylan because it's a name that tends to be associated with non-serial killer qualities. (Well, maybe less so now that it's so popular, but back in the heyday of 90210, that was the Sensitive Hot Guy name.)

I could go on. Sometimes the name means something, and sometimes its sound or cultural associations are actually deliberately misleading, but it just has to feel right to me.

I don't think it sounds silly; of course, I wouldn't. <g> What generally happens for me is: a character will come into my head, introduce themselves, and say they want to tell me their story. I put up a story start in SYW about six years ago that happened just that way.

Something that could be interesting for the naming in a SF story is a having a character cast with a large diversity of names form different cultures, as this could speak to something about the globalization and intermingling of humanity at that point in time. It also presents to opportunity to have a name that is recognizable but differing in small ways; for example, the first name Emily is fairly common in the US, but in Germany the names Emilia and Amelie are common.

This is something I've done in my own work, though the reasoning behind the multiculturalism is due to the subject matter of professional car racing, which is a sport with drivers from all corners of the globe. My method has been to pick first names that are common in that character's country of origin that give a general feel in line with how I want their personality to come across as. For their last name of a prominent figure from that country from the same field. For example, I have a female German Engineer character who's name is Emilia Euler. Emilia from common German names and Euler after the famous mathematician and engineer Leonhard Euler who hailed from the border of Germany and Switzerland. I also have Japanese driver character with the last name Kobayashi after the former F1 and current World Endurance Championship driver Kamui Kobayashi.

I grew up with people named "Yesenia", "Emma-Rosalind", and "Lief" so reading books where everyone's names are "Sarah" or "Tim" just feels wrong to me. A few common names in the mix helps to make the name selection realistic, but I have a healthy portion of uncommon names in there too.

When coming up with a name for a character from a fantasy world, I tend to base it on a real name (ie Friedrich becomes Drich)