I have some sort of method/madness thing going when naming my characters so was wondering what others do.
In my case, I generally use names of dogs that I have or have had. Poor Raze must have really been wondering when I sent him saves and the characters had names like Kalkaki, Ochi, Nashoba, Nanaloma, etc.

Story: my main breed is the Louisiana Catahoula Leopard Dog which was originally a native American breed. Oral history says that the native dogs that they had were crossed with dogs that DeSoto left behind (Spanish Mastiffs and Spanish Greyhounds) to form the Catahoula. Later, when the Frenchmen that were expelled/left Canada arrived, they adopted the breed and crossed them with Beaucerons to form the modern breed. Well, I was tired of hearing French names for the dogs so I named mine using a translation dictionary from the closest language I could find (Chickasaw) to the now extinct Natchez language of the original Catahoula owners. My translations are probably quite wrong but (in order) the above I believe translates to: Rocky, Little, Wolf, and Mystery. Anyway, that's my story - what's yours?