Naming your characters

[Masamune·1600]

For example, in CT, the name "Ayla" for the cave chick just... wasn't... good enough. Considering her style and appeal, her name, and such, I decided that her real name must actually be "Layla!" Not Ayla. Ayla sounds like a baby noise.

Ayla was probably based on the character Ayla (an Ice Age-era woman) from Jean M. Auel's series of prehistoric novels, Earth's Children. The best known among these is likely The Clan of the Cave Bear. I'll admit I've never read any of these, but the link seems fairly apparent. If Ayla isn't consistent with the Japanese name, then we likely have Ted Woolsey to blame.

[DarkLadyNyara]

I name my characters after parts of my anatomy and then I hack the game and change the monster names to parts of the female anatomy.

You've got issues.
I generaly default.

[Breine]

I keep the default names the first time I play through the game, but after that I sometimes give the characters names. I'm creative so I try to come up with names for the characters myself, which often turns out fine.

[KoShiatar]

I leave defalut names, except when I really don't like one at all or there is no name. In that case, I mix up people I know, characters I like, invented names or silly sounding words. For instance my current FF I team is composed by:

-Nico (named after Nicola, a boy whom I happen to like a lot )
-Yank
-Nyan (Meow in Japanese)
-Onji (From a song's name)

[TheSpoonyBard]

I'm similar to Sepho in that I change the names of characters to their 'real' names (Red XIII, Cait Sith, Garnet, etc.) but other than that I keep them default.

However, there were some confusing flashbacks in FFVII when I changed Cloud's name to Zack and Barret's name to Dyne, but that was only after I had played through several times.

[Holycow81]

I usually keep the default names, except for the main character, which I name after myself (I share a PS2 with my brother, we need to know which game is whose). Except in FF6, in which the main character was Terra, and I'm a guy, so... yeah. However, in a recent game of FFVII, I named Barret Mr. T just 'cause I couldn't help it any longer. I didn't think of what would happen later in the game: "Aeris: Thank you, Mr Mr. T."

My friend always come up with stupid name that I can't help but laugh at... he names Tidus "FARTFACE", Cloud "CloudPEEh (pee head)" Barret "Buttboy", etc.

(SPOILER)Someone on this forum mentioned calling Aeris "my balls", so I suggested it to him (he didn't mind hearing spoilers, and like the idea for her name)

I also eventually called Red XIII "Nanaki", and the next time I play through, I'm using the idea of calling Cait Sith "Reeve".