First, research and create your meaningful character names.
Then, when you’ve grown to know and love them, change them.
To ease reader confusion, I carefully crafted and differentiated my major characters’ names in my first book. I made sure their names captured something about their personality, and that it wasn’t similar to another major name.
Then while working on one of the last drafts, I realized some minor characters would become major ones in the sequel, so I had to rewrite many names, minor and major. [See the above image.]
Then I changed them again after figuring out the plots and characters for books 3 and 4.
Is there an easier way? Of course there is.
Cue music . . .
SPREADSHEETS!
And their magical alphabetizing.
Spreadsheets are easy. So why didn’t I use one? Because I prefer the work of a familiar method to the work of a simple learning curve. You might say I suffer from entrenchment or I’m gifted with retrophilia. I say I’m just lazy.
But hey. I did type this post after the nib on my quill kept breaking.