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:

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:

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):

STEP6: Final names!
I revised my names yet again and was finally satisfied with my list. You can see it here: E'shawnti Topic

Wow, that's a cool process! I just made a quick language and used a lexicon manager to randomly (not purely random, I set guidelines) create the words, and I just used modifications of those to make the names. I like this more in-depth process that involves actual real-life facts. Kudos!