Buffy's name is. . . complicated. Even as a tiny elf, her parents had trouble keeping clothes on her - particularly around any body of water. In the buff as it were. . . even to this day, she often shucks off her buckskins around any waterfall for a swim. Secondly, I liked the idea of alliteration, as in Buffy the blonde Bosmer from Bravil, and I thought Buffy sounded better than Barbie or Bambi. Thirdly, like another young blonde, she quite dislikes vampires and has been known to actively hunt them. And lastly, I felt a rather tongue in cheek name like Buffy might keep me from taking her too seriously.

I named her while playing Oblivion in 2007. After learning the secrets of time travel, she subsequently moved to Skyrim and eventually on to ESO a few years ago. Between those three games, she has amassed over 17,000 hours of playtime so, as you can see, my idea of not taking her too seriously failed miserably.

In ESO, she plays as numerous classes and switches between them as readily as she changes outfits or hairstyles. Her appearance, pet, precious mare all remain the same. Even her name remains constant within the administrative restrictions of the game via the use of accents or stylized letters.

All of mine are tailored to each character, how I imagine they will be(in actual play they often take on their own personality regardless of what I planned.

Blood Howl: a wood elf stamina sorcerer /werewolf who's since become magicka after 5 years.

Sinistyr: a khajiit stamina necromancer

Black of Soul: argonian nightblade magicka

Knight Whisper: khajiit stamina nightblade

Makes Grass Grow: argonian magicka warden(our U.S. military should get that one

Conriocht: wood elf stamina warden werewolf(not sure how true since my grandfather was an infant coming here from Ireland but i was always told werewolves were protectors/defenders and not horrible monsters.

Daigon Wrath: magicka dragonknight easily "Dragons Wrath"

Keaghan McClain: nord stamina Dragonknight, actual grandmother's maiden name.

And of course Lumenn Sunblaze: a character that was first invented 20 years ago in EQ as a druid on Brell Serelis. Current incarnation is a templar, mostly magicka

It's so hard to pick names so I just go with lore and race-friendly versions of own name. My Altmer was called "Athanasios of Skywatch". I race-changed him to Imperial, so now he is known as "Athanasius X" (the 10th).

17 toons and counting across two servers...they're all called Geo's "something or another"...actually a few on the second server have the same name as on the first (different builds, but, the same appearance)...let's see:

Geo's Crafty Bret [magblade] [NA]
Geo's Magic Man [magplar] [NA]
Geo's Party Elf (x 2) [mag sorc, magblade] [NA, EU]
Geo's Mister Nice Guy (x 2) [stamplar, stam dk] [NA, EU]
Geo's Imp [stam dk] [NA]
Geo's Sneaky Ass [stamblade] [NA]
Geo's Dragonbreath [mag dk] [NA]
Geo's Sylvester [stam warden] [NA]
Geo's Likes-to-Watch (x 2) [mag warden, mag sorc] [NA, EU]
Geo's Little Big Man [stam sorc] [NA]
Geo's Main Man [magplar] [EU]
Geo's Nature Boy [stam warden] [EU]
Geo's Deadman [stam necro] [EU]
Geo's Nordic Night [mag necro] [EU]

I think that's it

when i first started gaming - i used to name all my saved games Geo's "something or another" and it's just stayed with me...

i can only imagine how weird folks may think i am when the run across my toons in cyro with all similar looking names...

I don't really take lore into account when picking a name. However I try to stay somewhat imersive by picking an actual name, not something like 2Tanky4U.

Names from other Games I personally play

Usually some pun or play on words, often with a pop culture reference. I actually have a lot of characters named after or inspired by song titles and lyrics, I mostly seem to do that with females for some reason.

Little Red Corvette (Prince song) is my little red haired Bosmer girl.

Buttercup Baby, as in "why do you build me up, buttercup Baby, just to let me down, and mess me around," is my muscular but cute Orc stamblade.

Wilma's Rainbow (Helmet song and album tittle), is my breton Templar healer.

Dirty Deidra, Dunmer Chic (pronounced sheek, as in Dirty Deeds, Done dirt cheap) in my Dunmer necro vampire girl.

Extra Ordinary Automaton. This one is a double reference, named for Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine, I changed machine to automaton to be more lore friendly and separated extraordinary into Extra Ordinary in reference to the show Umbrella Academy and Vanya's book Extra Ordinary.

Sam's Bloody Rage, my stamDK werewolf is also a song reference, but it's a long story so I'll leave it to your imagination how it relates to any song... And no it's not Summer In The City, the song about the Summer of Sam serial killings where the angry little man went crazy because his nieghbor's dog wouldn't stop barking and he thought it was telling him to kill people, but wow, wouldn't that make sense with him being a werewolf. So if that was your guess, A for effort you know your music.

Not all pop culture references are song related though, like;

Summerset Barbie, as in Malibu Barbie but she's an Altmer from Summerset.

Orc and Bear, my Orc warden, named for Moose and Squirrel, otherwise known as Rocky and Bullwinkle

Reeb Maiden, my female nord warden healer. This is Beer Maiden with beer spelled backwards, a reference to the Brad Pitt and David Duchoveny movie Kalifornia, where Brad pitt's character always calls beers reebs.

I have other alcohol related ones

Nede'smore Mead, my nord dk tank

Fuzzy Navel, a Khajiit, because he probably has a furry belly button.

I don't usually expect people to get the references, but when they do it's pretty cool, especially for the more obscure ones.

i assume I'm not the only one who's named a Khajiit after a pet cat they had.

I look at UESP for lore friendly names for my characters.

Only a few characters beside my necromancers were named in advance. Usually I create the character and then wait until the name crawls out of my skull. I have to modify it when the name is already taken. Sometimes it stays close to the original idea but sometimes I think of something totally different.

Rarely, I name characters based on my theme for the account. One of my accounts is all Nords. On the EU server, they all share a clan name and their first names all end in "asha". On the NA server, they share a different surname and the first names reflect their class or role, for instance, one of the tanks is named Patton and one of the Sorcs is named Sparkie.

I have list of names that I use for every game. Not specially made for a game. My account name is Breathless everywhere. I mean everywhere as it is my nickname for having respituary problems. Now cured. They are proud members of house Wolf. Special people around the world left their previous names and titles behind to work for a single cause.

Bambang Wolf Indonesian(means knight)
R
Eisenheim Wolf German(kind of)
A
Till Wolf Elvish
Hakan Wolf Turkish
Lev Wolf Russian
Ezio Wolf Italian
Shahid Wolf Arab
S

Till ,being the reluctant leader of house Wolf, my main. Missing names are I don't have a toon for yet. I have a similar set of female names but its not complete. Those names (except Till) are subject to change.

Easy Fantasy Name Generators.
https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/altmer_names.php

I kinda tend to use the same name for my main char in any game.
.. just had to add a lastname here cause it was taken

Though if I was aware of lore-friendly naming before char creation, I may have tried to 'morph' it a bit to pass as a Khajiit name.

I always keep my characters lore friendly. Like my pve Breton magplar dd Billy Idol or my magsorc Blondie xD