Character Naming

How does an author come up with names for a character? Do they think them through or do they come to them in moments of inspiration? Do they name characters after people or objects around them? Do they just make them up or do they make them mean something?

For me it's a combination of all of the above. Some of my characters reference other works and some are named after people. Here's a short explanation of a few of my character's names.

I wanted all the emperor's family to have kind of a French sounding name but without being too overt. I made up the name Lebar, originally LeBar. And went from there.

Rafe is actually the name my high school crush gave his cactus in our Biology class experiment.
Peter is from Pete Wentz.
Bik, an alien character, is taken from Bic, the type of pen I was using to write at the time. I changed the last letter to avoid any possible law suits.
Chase Bloom is a combination of two actor's names, Chace Crawford and Orlando Bloom. But also a kind of nod to Leopold Bloom from Ulysses.
Enora is a play on Inara from Firefly.
R271 was a random letter and number pulled from the air although it does have more significance in the story which you have to wait to find out.

Luego habalamos!!

C.S.