Oops - brain fart – when I saw the “QWERTY” suggestion, I thought “don’t do that, he was a perv in Lolita”, then I remembered it was Quilty. (Which was cool, cuz it’s so like Guilty.)
Don’t get too weird. I absolutely hate those consonant-heavy people and place names – they’re unprounceable and interfere with the flow. Brains can stumble too, you know.
How many of us know how to say Cthulhu? Or Yogsothoth or those other HPL names? Always have to wipe my chin.
I browse baby name books, telephone books
( gotten a lot of good ones there) obits and birth announcements ( another little hobby of mine) and scanning the white pages in another country ( like england) for ideas off the internet. I’ve also found myself on alumni web pages for lots of colleges and have gotten a bunch of great names from old grad classes from fifty -sixty years ago.
Many libraries carry major phone books for around the country. It’s worth a look.
Can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in a hotel room bored to death with whats on TV and picked up the local white pages and started writing down names that I might use for future use.
Since I like historical romantic fiction, I’ve saved one name combination I’ve created from the Phone book search for a special character : Amity Wormwood. It says: Character actor, small but memorable part.
I’ll second using names from other cultures. If you are writing fantasy or sci-fi, picking a culture that has a similar feel to your millieu will help reinforce that feel.
In this spirit, here is a middle eastern name page: http://www.bdancer.com/med-guide/names/fnames.html
Sometimes good names can come from unusual sources. One I always wanted to use in a novel (if I could write) is Dal-Abi. I saw it on the back of … the Dallas to Abilene mail truck. 
Open a blank text file on your computer.
Place a 2 year old at the keyboard for 5
minutes.
Save file for future reference and/or
call manufacturer to find out how to make
computer function normally again.
If your story has a large number of characters, you’d help your readers keep them straight by giving them names that can be associated with their appearance, function, personality.
Hero - anything but Bob
Hero’s mom – Dorothy
Hero’s innocent girlfriend - Debbie
Hero’s slutty girlfriend - Jessica
Hero’s best friend who is also better looking - Doug or Steve
Hero’s gay friend - Doug or Steve
I just beg you, spell any ‘made-up’ names in normal English. Nothing I hate more than reading a Dwarvish or Klingon name pronounced huv-de-KULL and written Hv’dy’yKl. It’s just idiotic.
Peace.
Take a regular name and pile on the vowels.
Mike becomes Maikoe; Lisa becomes Laisau. John becomes Jouhan. For some reason, it seems exotic and you can have your readers arguing over pronunciation. On of my favorite authors uses Gaelic names that even SHE’s not sure how to pronounce! Laoghaire, for instance. Some call her Leg-hair. Others call her the proper Gaelic pronunciation, which is L’heery.
Take two real words and slam them together:
Lend + Dire = Lendire
Take an existing name, remove a letter then add a letter:
Michael becomes Mihaeli
Or even easier - use real names but spell them differently:
Jason becomes Jeiisin, Elizabeth becomes Lisbitte
Whatever.
Dont use real names spelled differently, its like those loosers like kellI, when clearly it should be kellY. 
Try an atlas of constellations, names of stars, etc, then vary them a bit.Some of them are too cheesy, but go for the more obscure ones.
AuntiePam: Actually, if one wished to be anal about the pronunciation of Cthulhu, I was reading a web site that said Lovecraft himself varied on the pronunciation of Cthulhu, but said it should approximate something like KHYOOL-yhoo or some such mind-blasting eldritch piping like that. That said, I usually just pronounce it k’tulu.
Oh, there was an OP? As far as SF and fantasy names, when I had to name D&D characters and such back in the day, I liked to break out my friend’s big book of Navy vessels and incorporate some ship names, which might get you a guy named Decatur Forrestal, which still sounds kinda cool, IMHO.
-Steve
moriah wrote:
Now now, Klingon has an official spelling system, and spelling it “Huvdekull” would break the rules. You wouldn’t ask somebody to spell the French name Jacques Cousteau as “Zhawk Coostoe”, would you?
I’m not flying fast, just orbiting low.