The Naming of Names

One of the perennial questions I get from people, especially those who want to be writers, is "how do you come up with the names?"-meaning, usually, the "weird fantasy names" in settings that bear no resemblance to the "real world," rather than the more ordinary names like James and Cecelia I use in other books. I usually just say something along the lines of "I make them up" with variations: some are typos of real names or words, some are real names from the phone book with one or two letters c