When I created the names for the E'Shawnti and Attenise I had so much fun making them I just want to share the process I went through
STEP1: Deciding on my characters.
I knew I wanted one "God figure" and several "angelic-type" beings under him. I knew this was going to be my main/only religion, thus it was the only one I was going to delve into.
STEP2: Research.
Yup, I researched
.......a lot. I said hello to my long forgotten "World Book" (a computer encyclopedia) and sat down to researching other religions. I wanted to find out who/what they considered to be gods. I hunted down Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, and all the other religions I could find. I created a list of their gods and what they represented. (I still have the file on my computer 
)If you really care of just want to read up on other (old) cultural religions:
Attachment:
STEP3: Finding roles and settling on a number.
From my list I sifted through and choose the most repetitive/common gods. I also thought of a good number I wanted to use. I had decided that I wanted a set number of 'underlings' for my God figure. I finally settled on 14 (7+7
). I then matched those 14 with the top 14 most repetitive/common gods (setting aside any references to a high god to be used in conjunction with my God figure's name).STEP4: Making the names.
I took all the names the corresponded with each of my 14 'chosen' underlings (earlier I also included any names of groups of gods). From each of these mini lists I began shuffling and mixing the words, syllables, and letters to form new words.
Here is my first run through of names and what they're associated with:
Attachment:
STEP5: Second draft.
The above file was my first draft and (like stories) got a second draft written. I also showed a list of my names to a few friends to see which names they liked. You can see my revised list here (withthe list of names):
Attachment:
STEP6: Final names!
I revised my names yet again and was finally satisfied with my list. You can see it here: E'shawnti Topic