What names do you usually pick for your sims?

[Sonshine]

I usually use a baby name book that I have next to my desk. I look up names that I like the meaning of. I also use a website called Baby Names Around the World for foreign names. In one of my TS2 families (the one in Strangetown with all the dead husbands) I renamed the teen girl and had her marry and named all of her kids African names. I changed her last name to Ebadi and her first name to Eshe. In my 2 current TS3 legacies, I have one that I use the alphabet, a different letter for each child and an apple theme and the other is a flower theme. The founder of the first is Apple Devonshire. All of the kids have apple names (Braestar, Chehalis, etc...). The other one started out with Avens Bouvardia and he married Ruby Broke. All of the kids will have flower names. I also will sometimes look up trait or profession names in a different language and go with that for a last name.

[juliette]

I like create character based on myself ;P

[Snufflesxx]

Sonshine, I have one of those baby name books too!

[Eldridge]

I use Emilia a lot too. I actually had a Sim called Emilia (or Emmy) who had a family who's family is on generation 5 at the moment

In my past games I had Emilia in generation 2, she was a singer back then. It was just too sad when see Emilia died from the old age. And then I start a new family recently and the baby girl is born, I name her Emilia again and it's on generation 2 too. Don't know why, I just like that name, lol.

It's not a challenge or anything... just for fun!

Yeah, me too. Actually to be honest when it come to challenge or anything, I am no good. I have play the legacy challenge recently. But, I am still stuck in generation 4 and don't have mood yet to continue. I envy those who can reach several generations, lol. I just love when I see the family tree to look how everyone is connected with each story that Sim has.

I'm sorry if it was off the topic

Oh yeah, other name that I usually use back then (TS2) is "Alfred, "Blanca", "Dino", "Elliot", "Enrique", "Ferdinand Hernandez", "Gray", "Ivoire". "Russel", "Ryu", "Maxwell". I don't know why, I just like that name.

The new family that I started two day ago, I use "Whitlock" as family name. And the founder name is "Matthew". I don't usually use that name a lot. He is married to "Agnes Crumplebottom" and now his children "Emilia" is married to "Erik Darling" and live happily in Lucky Palms :p

I like create character based on myself ;P

Me too

[Autumn Morning]

I use the Behind the Name site posted earlier, too. I love looking through lists of names - if you sign up for an account you can save the ones you like on different lists. It's really useful for Sims and other games. They operate a sister site for surnames as well and I have found that very useful in picking last names. They have a list of the most common surnames in several countries and I often pull from that (http://surnames.behindthename.com/top/).

I'm a bit of a name nerd, so I often use names I like but don't think I could use on real life babies. My legacy-style family is all flower names for the girls (Rose, Lily, Iris, Violet, Daisy, etc.) and traditional names for the men (James, John, Matthew, Joshua, etc.). I'm having a ton of fun with my Challenge naming! My Baby Boomer couple is Abraham (father of many) and Metrodora (mother gift) and their kids all have mythology names in alphabetical order: Apollo, Balder, Castor, Deimos, Echo, Freyr, Glaucus, Hermione, Icarus, Janus, Klytie, Leandros, Mnemosyne, Niobe, Orion, Priam...the list goes on.

[sammymcgoff]

I'm using Behind the name too, as I'm going to use foreign names for my Sims kids. For example, I'm going to make Honey Darnell and Booker Singleton have a son, to see if his genes mesh with Honey's as well as they do with Imogen Pelly's and I'm going to name the son Ivaylo Singleton (Ivaylo is a Bulgarian name, in case you didn't know)

[CSquared2]

I've used Behind the Name for a long time, too.  I also like to use fakenamegenerator.com.  It tends to throw out more realistic combinations than the randomizer at Behind the Name, if you're into realism.  If not, I also just noticed it now has Hobbit and Ninja categories.  I think I need a Hobbittown!

[Machlevin]

Historic names; anything from Konrad Adenauer - a German statesman - to Richard Feynman, an American theoretical physicist.

[Abandag]

When I was trying to do a Sim family based on my real family, I gave everyone names that are similar to their real life names.  I have horrible handwriting.  When I was in grade school, the librarian read my name as Doug, even though that isn't my name.  That got me looking at how I wrote my last name to see if I could get some other name out of it.  The best I could come up with was Sdintler.  30 years later, I still use Doug Sdintler as an alias of sorts.  For everyone else, I tend to use a little bit of free association to come up with another name (if I am renaming a real life person), but most of the time the names I choose are rather common.  If my sim has a daughter, I will likely name her Emily or Jessica or some other common (some might even say boring) name.

I like play-on-word type names as well.  Twinbrook in particular seems to be packed with sims like this.  For example, I have met two Twinbrook mail carriers: Carrie Post and Mark Stamp.  Of course, if you speak some language other than English, these names don't make sense.

My current sim I named Jackson Dagger, because I thought it sounded cool.  He married Jade Greenwood from Twinbrook.  I didn't realize what her married name would be until I actually saw it spelled out:  Jade Dagger.  That's the coolest name I've had for a sim, and it was completely on accident.

[Deklitch]

I am currently using Les Miserables Characters (except for one) for my current immortal dynasty.

For the spares that I can name, I'm giving them names of actors/actresses that Australia claims for their own.

For Baby Boomers IV, I used Star Trek alien race names for the kids.

I have previously used:-
* Star Trek actors
* Australian Capital Cities
* Santharian Province names (a fantasy world building site I'm part of)
* Biblical names
* Names of ancestors of mine
* Names of characters I use in storie

For virtually all my challenges, I use 'Tribble' as a surname, and a first name that describes them.

[Saturn]

I'm all over the place with names.  If I am doing an ethnic sim, I'll research actual names and their meanings and use them.  Otherwise I use silly, sensible, sensuous and surreal names.  After playing the sims since the Sims1 days, I often run out of names and just keep the actual names the sims come with.

[jennovazombie]

Interesting naming techniques, I might have to start trying to name mine again, haha.
Normally I hit randomize a few times until there's something I like, unless I have a name pre-planned. I usually pick the sims traits off of what the name is as well. 
When I do plan names, I go for fantasy/scifi type names. Trillian and Zaphod are personal favorites that I've used often. I also tend to pick car names or weapon names for people too, like Enzo Ferrari, Tracer Rounds, etc. I have a webpage with a list of minor planet names, I use it a lot for other things and might use it for Sims too.

[wickedjr89]

I tend to mostly play legacies and I always pick a theme for each generation. My current legacy is on generation 2 where the 5 kids of generation 2 all got Greek names. Sometimes my themes are more obvious sometimes they aren't. The generation 2 heir though, the oldest was picked (I put up a poll for my readers to choose), is now an adult and i've choosen plant related names for the 3rd generation that has yet to be born, but that's because I plan on adding a plant sim baby! I always pre-choose several names for each generation based on the naming theme for that generation. Otherwise (like say with the founder, or when I make a sim just to make a sim or whatnot) I just go with what name pops into my head that I feel will fit that sim best. I have a baby name book and also look up baby names via internet.

[Shadowkeepernoir]

I'm all over the place with naming conventions. When I first started I used names of people I knew (or knew of) that I just like their name. Then I started picking themes for certain generations (birds, colors, animals, plants, foods).

 I did a lineage of chefs (all cooks) and picked names from well known chefs, using "Beard" as in the beard award as the surname.

When I started my imaginary friend legacy I had all my name lists complied specifically for variations of the word fox (Kitsune fox in Japanese is also mythical shape shifter) then I ran out of languages and compiled mythical creatures with shape-shifting abilities , my effort was cut short but I learned a lot. I tried to stay away from the major pantheons (Greek, Roman and Norse though I ended up using the latter), because so many people use them, I love mythology so I dug in to old Japanese, Romanian, Middle Eastern, Celt, Native American and Norse (there are not nearly as many somewhat benign shape shifters as you'd think).

 My current go is based on my favorite TV show, I'm pulling my names from the side characters and each generation will be a different era of the program. I've used the naming sites in the past with great results (not just for Sims but other projects) but with the meaning of names particularly in other cultures I play it a little safe on anything I'm putting out into the world/, especially when I'm drawing from a culture I'm not a member of that places high significance on naming.

[dontmindme]

All over the place with names. Current Life States Dynasty heirs (and kids until heir) are being named after various superheroes with each generation somehow matching. Other than that, it's whatever I feel like. I've been writing enough for the past ~8 years I have a database of names and meanings in my brain. When I get really bored, though, I'll rearrange the Mother and Father's names to get something I like.