[Imladris]

I do a few things to discover names.

A. Take a word from a foreign language (Latin and Greek for me normally), and "transform" it into a name.

B. For fantastical names, I try to find odd names -- names that aren't too common, and then spell them differently. Sometimes, I'll scramble letters as well.

As for deciding names: I believe that this is an off shoot of letting the story write itself. Sometimes you just *know* the name of your characters and all's well and dandy. Sometimes, as some of you have expressed, you don't. My recomendation would be to just pick a name you are somewhat satisfied and continue to write using that name. When you finally decide the name of your character, you can go to your word processor and replace the name, etc. However, if you don't like writing a character with an unsatisfactory name (like me), I would recommend to hold off writing the story. I've found that when I force a story, it doesn't work at all.