I ALWAYS have the worst time coming up with a good name for a character. It seems like some people just shoot out good names that naturally fit the character and are unique but I really struggle with it. For instance, I'm trying to decide on Sonja's last name and the name of her father but I just can't figure out anything yet. I saw an interview with Stan Lee talking about how his characters first and last names start with the same letter and it's catchy that way. I've tried to think of last names that start with an S but so far it's just making it harder to decide.

Random Examples:
Sonja Swan
Sonja Staples
Sonja Summers

Does anyone have any suggestions for making up good names? I know it's all a matter of opinion but I'm curious what others do.

Sorry, can't help you. It's a problem for me as well.
Sonja Summers sounds better than the other two, though. To me, that is.

I stole "Athra", and the other names, from the Prose Edda.

One of my favorite unintended consequences of that choice is the fact that the name of my title character "Athra" is the acronym for The Australian Trail Horse Riders Association. I love that.

http://www.athra.com.au/Index.aspx

Better still, there was a site, Queensland Riding Association or something, that had an Athra link, meaning to link to the Australian Athra of course, and instead linked to my site.

I loved that.

Athra is also a jewelry company. Ehh...

From the Prose Edda:

I do not know Sif's genealogy but she was a most beautiful woman with hair like gold. Lóridi, who resembled his father, was their son. Lóridi's son was Einridi, his son Vingethór, his son Vingener, his son Módi, his son Magi, his son Seskef, his son Bedvig, his son Athra, whom we call Annar, his son Ítrmann, his son Heremód, his son Skjaldun, whom we call Skjöld, his son Bíaf whom we call Bjár, his son Ját, his son Gudólf, his son Finn, his son Fríallaf whom we call Fridleif; he had a son named Vóden whom we call Odin; he was a man famed for his wisdom and every kind of accomplishment. His wife was called Frígída, whom we call Frigg.

What is Sonja's ethnicity? If you know that, it would narrow down your choices if you're looking for a familiar name. Is she of Spanish descent? Salazar might be appropriate, then, especially because it sounds like salamander and your story is about a secret underwater lizard kingdom. But Google tells me Sonja is a Greek name for girls meaning "Wisdom", so maybe a Greek last name like one of these might fit better:

# Sacca
# Sagona
# Saitta
# Salis
# Sallas
# Sallis
# Samaras
# Sanna
# Sarantos
# Sarkis
# Sarris
# Sava
# Savas
# Scafidi
# Scala
# Sica
# Sideris
# Simos
# Siska
# Sisko
# Sita
# Soter
# Sotir
# Sotiropoulos
# Soulis
# Spanos
# Speros
# Spino
# Spiros
# Spiteri
# Stamas
# Stamatis
# Stamos
# Stanis
# Stathakis
# Stathis
# Stathopoulos
# Stathos
# Stavropoulos
# Stavros
# Stavrou
# Straka
# Stratis
# Stratos

Somehow these Greek surnames feel pretty natural to me. Just some ideas

Sonja Samaras sounds great to me
even better than Sonja Summers

i guess it comes down to cultures and back stories to me. Some cultures have one word for a name, or nicknames and others have much longer names. The main thing for me though is making the name readable. you can have a great name, but if you are the only one that understands it, then it can alienate your readership a little.

If Sonja is her name, just let her be called that and let the last name come in the future. Add a little to the mystique about her.

It's funny, this is one of those things I was going to talk about on the Spy6teen blog--
A few years back, I was going through some old notebooks, looking at old project ideas. One of the things that struck me was how names of characters in current projects kept popping up-- different variations, but there was a thread of common first and last names that I apparently gravitated towards.

I came to the conclusion that I collect names. It's weird, right?

In the case of Cally, from s16-- that was actually a name of a girl that I went to high school with. Truthfully, I didn't know her, she might have been a year ahead of me-- but I always heard her name in passing-- and it was never just "Cally"-- it was always her full name: Cally Calhoun (different spelling for my character)-- I always thought it was a good super heroine name, since it had that double letter "Stan Lee-thing"-- y'know: Peter Parker, Sue Storm, Dr. Doom, etc...

I fuss over names quite a bit-- and it isn't uncommon for me to finish a script and then Find/Replace on a name because I've decided to change it.

If you're getting to the point where you're "stuck" because of a name-- I'd just suggest using a temp name for the time being. Of course, the "danger" is that it will become the name. That's happened to me, more than once.

Funny side story regarding names:
About a year ago, my wife and I got a dog from a rescue shelter-- The shelter had "temp named" the dog "Butterbean," a name that I hated. Figuring, the pup was only 8 weeks old and hadn't figured out what it's name was, we started tossing around ideas for a name on the car ride back. The pup was asleep on her lap, as we're yammering on-- at some point, I threw out "Camden," referring to Camden Yards-- The pup instantly jolted up and tried to make her way over to me.
That pretty much nailed it-- Camden decided to name herself.

Sadly, we don't get to do that with characters...

In my opinion any of the first names you outlined are fine. The double consonant names are catchy, but seem unnatural to me. I tend to stay away from them to the extent we give our characters full names, but I can already think of exceptions to that rule.

I'd say the real danger choosing a name is over engineering. At the end of the day if you have a strong character people will accept the name regardless of how catchy or clever it is. I think whats more important is the reveal. If its said in passing without much fanfare I think the audience will take it as an extra detail that adds depth to your universe. If you were going to brand everything with Sonja Swann (or whatever you choose) that's a different story. The only thing I'd abosultely avoid is saving the full name until the end as some sort of pay off ... that's always disappointing (Jake Berenson from Animorphs, anybody?)

Sonja Soulis is kinda cool to me, though it does kinda sound like soulless. Sonja Sallis is nice too. I like Sonja Summers the best, but it does remind me of Scott Summers ^^;

As for names, I can't really help...mine just pop out of my head right away, or else I rummage around http://www.behindthename.com/

The few things I remember as a "rule" comes from naming children. If you have a last name with a lot of syllables don't name your kid something long unless you expect them to always go by a nickname. If the last name begins with a vowel don't let their first name end with one unless it's silent. Those things just make names more difficult to say.

Most of my characters are just regular people so I try to avoid silly names if possible. I also try to avoid names that mean something or describe the character.

Telford Porter is a teleporter you say?

Augh.

Most of my characters are first names I liked for what they could be shortened to plus last names from my school yearbook.

I think Sonja Soulis/Sallis is pretty good, Akeli. I read it as Sonja Solace, which again kind of fits the story because she takes in the lizard-in-a-cat.

Wow, great answers. I never thought about what ethnicity she was and how that affects the name. Ha. You would think that it would be the first thing I figure out. I don't even know what ethnicity Sonja is. Hmmm. But all the suggestions that CarpeChaos gave are great to dig through and I'm glad that others have narrowed it down to Soulis or Sallis. haha

I never really plan on using her full name anywhere in the book but I wanted to call her dad Mr. Soulis (whatever the last name is). That way people could just put it together. I think at the beginning of the book I'll have the sketch of the lizard man that her father drew with his signature.

The other name I'm having trouble figuring out is what Victuals true name is. I don't reveal it in the first book because I like the mystery of it. I'm not sure if I'll even reveal it in the second book either but I at least wanted to figure it out for myself. Just so you know, I use to call him "Moon" as a lizard man but I'm still not convinced that it fits a lizard man. The idea behind the name is that his mother named him after the Moon because it was just a rumor that it exists to them. She named him after it saying "he will go great places and see things nobody else has". Does that make sense? Any other suggestions for Victuals true name?

Great link, Akeli !

Names can be fun. I used to roleplay and then I had to come up with names regularly. And often I needed unique names.
My first stop is always a name site. Unless a name already popped into my head. I also have a long list with names that I collected throughout the years. I started that name collection when I was 8 or so and kept adding to it for over 20 years. I should actualy put it in a list on my computer one day. I bet that would keep me busy for a while.

But yea, first stop would be a namesite. The site Akeli mentioned is one of them and I also visit: encyclopedia of baby names. I'll often just look through the names randomly and write down anything I like. And then I'll choose one of them or sometimes I'll even make some small changes to make a name of my own.
For last names I use: Surname origin and Last Name Meanings Dictionary.

Ethnicity is indeed important, especialy with last names. But it's also good to remember that it's not like the father needs to be Greek or Spanish or whatever. It can be that several generations back there was one man with a different ethnicity in the family, and his last name got carried over from father to children throughout time.

Oh, and don't shoot me, but I actualy like Sonja Schultz or Sonja Sears.

@Jason - interesting question. Maybe it's an artist thing, because I really remember having trouble coming up with finalized names for my characters. I'm not sure if there's a good way to go about it. I know for me personally, I've always liked Neil Gaiman's character's names. They just always felt like they suited the characters and yet were really simple.

I had some general ideas of what I wanted the names to be, but my wife reads a ton and she was a big help. She sat on the computer and I poked around on my iPhone and we brainstormed a list of different names based on what the characters personalities and/or backgrounds are. Then I kind of mixed and matched until I had something that I liked.

About the first and last names starting with the same letter... I've never been a fan of that. Maybe because it's too "comic booky" for my tastes. Have you ever met someone with a name like that? The first thing that jumps into my head is they sound like a superhero. Maybe that's just me...

Sometimes I just take names that I see somewhere and which strike a chord. I needed a name for a spaceship and one day I saw a poster on a supermarket entrance which advertised a traveling exhibition of white alligators. So I named the spaceship "White Alligator".

Or sometimes chance helps you to find an interesting name. One of our cats is named "Yoshi" but we often call him "Yogel Baby". Once my wife mentioned him in an instant message and misstyped his name as "Yogul Bebt" or something like that and from that I derived the name "Yogul Bebbit" for one of the characters of the Wormworld Saga.

Or when I received my trademark registration confirmation from the "Office For Harmonization In The Internal Market" which was signed by its president "Wubbo de Boar" I immediately knew that I wanted a character named "Wubbo" in the story.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Sonja is the Scandinavian version of Sofia, which is the Greek name that means Wisdom. So that would put a different twist on her ethnicity

But can we now days still guess peoples ethnicity by their first names? I mean, a lot of parents give their kids names from all over the world, or even names that are completely made up. Well atleast here in Belgium people do.

No I'm pretty sure people do it all over the world. I've heard some parents named their son Cyclops (X-Men fans, go figure)! But it's (probably) not the majority and even if it were you don't have to acknowledge that in your comics. Especially in comics with lizard people. Reality is all well and good but think about this - Sonja might mean something in lizard tongue! You have endless possibilities in fiction, you don't have to rely on reality that much.

No indeed, you're right there. My Syrian-Armenian neighbor is called Marie-Antoinette, and she doesn't even speak French. Her aunt is Léonie, which sounds like something out of a 19th century novel. My Jordanian colleague is named Candide and she's half British. I'll pass on the dozens of Marco's, Carlo's, Johnny's and Madonna's. People here name their kids things that can't even be spelled in the supposed official language!
So yeah, not such a solid link.