Naming names

What's in a name? A lot, when it comes to fantasy

"Portentous apostrophes and incongrously-named characters (hands up Terry Goodkind and Anne McCaffrey) drive me wild when I'm reading — authors should learn from the naming skills of Ursula Le Guin and Alan Garner"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/mar/16/fantasy-character-names

Hello, /book/.  In view of this article, I thought I'd ask: what are your pet peeves, and principles, when it comes to names in fiction - I mean that broadly:  which authors, books or series do it well, which badly;  how would you go about choosing or creating convincing names, what would you avoid;  if we're talking invented worlds, how familiar / strange should a name be, how deep does the linguistic basis need to be?  Or anything else that occurs.

OP here:  obviously, if you think the article is totally off the mark, that might make a decent discussion too.

Stranger in a Strange land by Robert Heinlein uses some quirky names, bad ass book though, I pray it never get's made into a movie. Starship Troopers didn't do the book justice by any means.

I think that the names shouldn't have apostrophies, and they should at least reasonably fit the settings.

When I try to write something, I usually try to have a "language sound" in mind.  If the setting is Asianesque, you can't name a man George without a damn good reason.  (for that reason the normal HP names didn't bug me -- It's ENGLAND, people are named Neville in England.)  If you had a vaguely Celtic setting (overdone IMO, but ok) then names like Padraig and  Flynn and Angus make a lot of sense. 

As far as the names of the world, the same thing applies -- if the Elves have a Welsh-like culture and language, name things things that sound Welsh.  If the Orks have a language that sounds like Mongolian then name things that way.  If you're combining cultures, It seems as though cultures next to each other might very well call things by different names (Doubtful that the French have the same name for the English Channel that the English do). 

Personally, I collect the phrasebooks for travelers.  That way you could have consistant names for things and make a world seem like a real place.

For settings based in the future (or post-apoc) I always base my names in Esperanto.

Names have to make sense in the setting, but the only time they really throw me off is when I constantly have to make sense of them or figure out who is who (note: tad willims).