My 9 "Simple" Steps.
1. Know the character's ethnicity and age.
2. Know the effect of their name on them. Like, if they had a name they might have gotten teased about as a kid THINK ABOUT what it would do to/for them. I once knew a black kid named Aryan. Public school was not easy for Aryan. I've also known a lot of immigrants with hard-to-pronounce names for Americans so they introduce themselves as "Chad" but their real name is like "Chadaanasakarian." They'd flat out tell you, "You're not going to be able to pronounce my name, so don't worry about trying too, it's Chad, okay?"
3. Know who the character's parents were and their ethnicity. How did their parents feel about their ethnicity? A German immigrant to the US in the 1930s might avoid using the old family name of "Adolf" and instead name him "Donald."
4. The father's ethnicity will decide the character's LAST NAME. That is if the parents were married at the time of birth, or Mom (in the US) wanted to try and ding the Dad for child support. Likewise, the character might have Mom's last name --lookup last names based on her ethnicity, and pick one you like.
Use Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask Jeeves, whateves...
5. Based on 1,2 & 3, look up baby names using Google (or any search engine.) Enter something like, "Boys baby names Scotland." You might want to throw in a decade with that too. The name "Zelda" was real popular at the turn of the last century, but video games aside I don't see/hear it a lot --or "Morty" for that matter... Get Schwifty...
This is also helpful in creating an automatic family tree if they were named after their great-grandparent, or another relative, not uncommon --in real life.
If they were adopted and didn't have a name at the time, take into consideration the background of the people doing the adoption.
6. Try to not have too many characters with the same letter in their first name, or worse the same first name. I've only read one book with two characters with the first name and I stopped at page 100 and was like Fuck this, I'm confused, --apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
7. When you finally have a first and last name, Google it and be sure that it's not the name of the main character from a sitcom or the lead singer of a band you've never heard of. If it is, return to steps 4 and 5 as needed.
8. If the character has a nickname make a story for it, or that nickname better do all the talking on its own. A biker named "Rotgut" tells you what he likes to drink. Sometimes a nickname is an ironic opposite, such as a fat guy called "Tiny."
A nickname's backstory isn't essential, hell, sharing a backstory may slow down your writing. But it's always better to have more and edit it out later.
9. I try to give main characters short easy-to-remember names. I also go for short names because I'd rather type "Chad" over typing "Chadaanasakarian" X thousands of times in a book/story/screenplay.
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