How do you name your characters? Do you write the story first, using ‘protag’, as I do sometimes, then find a name which fits? Or do you plan the name beforehand?
In The Story of O, O is never named. Neither is the woman in Rebecca. I love not knowing her name in Rebecca; a brilliant decision from Daphne du Maurier. It means that Rebecca is the name we think of, Rebecca is the image we have, and the main character seems pale in comparison.
I found my notes on how I named Stephanie Searle in Slights. I knew I wanted her to admire Stalin. Stalin means ‘stone’. I wanted a name starting with S, and found that Searle means armour, which seemed to match ‘stone’ and gave me an idea as to what sort of character she was. Stephen means ‘crown’. I thought that worked because she is monarch in the dark room, centre of all attention.
I have two or three name books. I don’t always use them. If I’m struggling, though, I’ll seek out the meaning and match a name that way.
In Walking the Tree, all the characters are named for trees. I sat down with my 1978 Encylopedia Britannica and made a long list. I still love flicking through those books my parents bought for me when I started high school.
Kaaron Warren 
In my Stormlord books, one group of characters know their ancestry had something to do with being miners and fossickers and gem/mineral traders, so they use mineral names – was fun searching through all those Australian gemstone books!
Wonderful! And isn’t it interesting how those names take on meaning once the characters start to come alive?
For short fiction that I write for fun I choose random names as to whenever the mood strikes me, but sometimes I do get the urge to go and research names and then pick the best one. It all depends on the genre.
Interesting how sometimes names come easily and don’t need to have meaning, but sometimes they do. Even in short fiction I’ll think about the meaning of the name. In a story I wrote about the last people on earth, I picked all names meaning emptiness or endings. Bane and Nadir, that kind of thing.
In a story I wrote about a woman, who is Hawaiian and can control light to break into colors, I picked a native name that is both glass and magic in meaning.
And currently I have this impulse to avoid giving names to characters. The stories are 1st person POV and usually dark and depressing, so I want the reader to feel like he is the character rather than putting a name to the protagonist and create emotional distance to what is happening.