I'm talking about your inbox, not the most-excellent potted meat product.

In the past, I have had troubles coming up with interesting names. I used to cull the phone book, searching for good first names to combine with interesting last names. It worked well, but many of my characters' names are boring, to say the least.

These days, I use my spam folder.

At work, spam gets sorted into a separate folder. I'm able to peruse the spam, check for false positives, that sort of thing. I save the ones with interesting names. Not the "Goaded E. Gladly" names, or the "Sure Stock Bet" names, but ones like Mara Geiser, or Ferlon Rory. Good, distinctive names, both of them.

Anybody else use different sources for names?