I always play Imperial ever since Morrowind. That's when the Impeiral=Roman thing really kicked off in TES.

I chose Scipio as a screenname. Name after famous general Publius Cornelius Scipio (Africanus) who defeated the legendary Carthenian general Hannibal Barca at Zama.
Considering Tulius had the Gaius Julius Caesar vive going down it was the only other logical choice.
Actually by the time those two words were put together they were Roman titles proved by the Roman senate, not a person.

Augustus was a title bestowed upon Octavian after he concluded a long series of civil wars within the Roman republic (mainly by defeating Mark Anthony's - and Cleapatra's fleet at Actium, and all other claiments were dead), basically declaring him emperor. Octacian was the adopted son of the legendary Gaius Julius Caesar, and the word Caesar was later used as a title for emperors. The German word "kaiser" and the Russian word "Tsar" are derived from Caesar I believe, thus expanding Julius Caesar's legacy for centuries.

Whatever name their face brings to mind. Oblivion character is Stella, Skyrim is Morganna. I usually go on a long search on "unique" baby names websites, and then settle for whatever I come up with.

i use my real name. i never liked it at first but now I do.

Mikhail - he who is like EL - he who is like God. The arch angel of supreme destruction. Inventor of the AK 47 has that name. the list goes on.

My Main character, Taizen, came from something i thought up for one of my character in World of Wacraft, my Troll shaman, it sounded good for an Argonian too so i stuck with it

Usually Lord of the Rings, lol. Tolkien was the man, definitely. I have no idea how he came up with it all.

http://www.20000-names.com/

There you can find nearly every name in the world ever used .

I always go to the special categories and use a appropriate name. For example, a sneaky char gets a name from the "secret names, mystery names" category.

Elder Scrolls lore.

If I'm basing the character off of books/movies, etc. of course I name it after that.

Same, don't name them after a specific character but use a combination of different characters first and second names. The imperial necromancer i'm playing for example is called Theon Stormborn. May not fit in with TES lore in terms of imperial sounding names but i think it sounds pretty cool.

Plus Theon Greyjoy is one of my favourite characters from the book.

I take names from wherever I can find 'em. My current character is named Dresden, after the city that was firebombed near the end of World War 2. He's a bit fond of fire . . .

I usually just name them relating to their characters ie: usually something related to my own character

One of the characters I created was called Skaerae, which is supposed to be a 'Norse' take on scary - she was supposed to be an evil bada**, but as ever, I slipped back into being the good person.

Recently made a new character, and I'm trying my damndest to make sure this one really stays relatively bad - at least in joining the DB and TG sense since I do want to do those quests (eventually).

I named her Varla - sort of a play on Vala from Stargate but the spelling is in line with the Varla stones in OB.

My dunmer's name in oblivion was Ni?nor, again from Tolkien's books. But when I decided to update the same character to be played in Skyrim, I just thought I needed a more thougher and a more dunmerish sounding name. Well dunno if I succeeded, but I came up with Nerynwe. I wanted to get the same sound to the name as in Nerevar, it just sounded nice, and mixed the letters by my own taste. I didn't think of a surname, but since I've made a background for her, the surname would propably be Indoril.

My Imperial mage, Demetra, got her name from google. I just searched for Roman/Latin names. I couldn't find anything better that would sound more uncommon and suited for a mage, since a lot of the Roman names are in use even today. Demetra means "loves the earth". Well, not that suited for a destruction mage, but I like the sound.

I get my names from a vareity of sources. This name, Kranmar, for instance. It's from my favorite Honeymooners episode. Kranmar's delicious mystery appetizer.

V?rst Flintan - dark elf nightblade - has the skullet haircut (long hair, bald on top), 'V?rst Flintan' is a corruption of the swedish words for 'the worst bald guy'

?rmen Skerik - argonian barbarian - '?rmen' is another swedish corruption, coming from 'the snake' and Skerik is the name of a bad-ass sax player from Seattle and I thought the name sounded a bit argonian

Ashkika - redguard rogue spellsword - she kicks ass. Ass kicker. Ass kicka. Ashkika.

lol, this is great

Imagination and taking model of in-game names.
For Imperials I use Latin names like Theodora, Aurora, Flavius and Severus.

For test and joke characters and some items I write some Finnish gibberish, like my experimential Naked Nord Challenge entry Helvetin Hevosmies ("[censored] Horseman"), my battleaxe Hilavitkutin ("Gadget") and my short lived Orc Ruma-ja Vihree ("Ugly and Green")

I name all my long-time characters Frodo, regardless of gender. When i was naming my first char i could not come up with anything, so i just randomly named him Frodo
After that it just stuck...

My Orc is named, Smittywerbanmanjenson-http://en.spongepedia.org/index.php?title=Smitty_Werben_Man_Jensen

He was #1.

I went with a more serious name for my Dark Elf Assassin, Vaden Relas.

Also, my invisible cameraman that follows my characters around taking screenshots is named, Bartholomew Bugarsnatcher.

mines my character name from back when i used to play D+D from over twenty years ago....Alias McDoom (he was a Anti-paladin see) oh there's his brother as well Hern McDoom

He's and acromegliac argonian named by the soldiers who's barracks he cleaned as a child (and later trained under as a young advlt). Name kinda writes itself. I was always fond of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Croc too.

Orrin. o seemed like a good powerful letter, then i just kind of chose letters that felt right after that.

I make them up. They all have meanings.

My female mage is called Kadreill Lei Sai, it means Black Apocolypse Star.

Vriddi gra-Yildnarz has a name that fits in with Orcish naming conventions in TES
Belladonna Malfleur because a witch needs a suitably sinister name
Griselda is named after a character who featured in stories set in the fantasy world of Glorantha Since its a Germanic name I thought it would do well enough for a Nord
Hildi Bladesong just seemed to fit a Nord skald
Angharad is a Welsh name that I reuse for all my Bosmer

Thanks for the responses. I must say I was expecting to see a lot more references to Tolkien.

I have always struggled with coming up with names for characters in games or fan fiction. For the fiction I use baby name sites because you can get names appropriate to different cultures. For every fictional culture I write, I use a RL culture's names. Makes it easy.

For games I used to get names from a variety of sources: film, anime, literature, history, etc.. and then reuse them from one game to another. So names like Valfreya, Teresa of the Faint Smile, Aerin (a variation of Aeryn). For the last few years I have been going almost exclusively with names from myth and history. For example my current character is Scylla gra-Brimo. Scylla is one of the children of Hekate (her name means 'she who rends', and Brimo is one of the titles of Hekate, meaning 'terrifying'.). I have also used Persephone, Medusa, Lilith, Penthesilea, Morrigan, Kirke, Medea, Nyx, Prytania, Boudica, Tomoe Gozen, Artemis, etc...

For all the TES games I've used a Nord called Haakon Slash as my mod test character.