The following is how our persona lead-person created the names for our
personas. I thought it was quite extensive and interesting, especially for
something as simple as a name...
First, you must have a completed persona (or close to completed). Names
should be added last...you can refer to your persona by title until you have
a name.
Next, based on the information that you collect for your persona,
specifically, your persona's age (you may also need to look at your personas
ethic background), conduct a search online to find out popular first names
within 2-3 years of your personas age. Baby name sites are always good ways
to find this information out. I use http://www.parents.com/babynames/
because there is an option to enter a year and it brings back popular names
for a specific year, but there may be other sites out there.
After you've establish a pool popular first names for the age of your
persona, then you can explore popular last names. It's difficult to find
this information out by year, but you can do by country. I've used Wikipedia
to do this, specifically, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_name.
Once you have a pool of popular first and last names, the fun begins. From
this pool, you can use other information that you've determined about your
persona such as sex, ethic background, country, etc. to determine your
persona's name.
I've typically done this research before entering a person creation meeting
and allowed others to help choose the name from the pool of first and last
names. This creates buy in from stakeholders with a clear rational for
naming...and it's just plain old fun.
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