New computer and thoughts on names

My new computer arrived yesterday! I managed to get everything transferred from the old machine via firewire, though the fan was running pretty loudly and I was afraid it might conk out in the middle. Wow--I can hardly believe how fast my new toy is and how great graphics look.It actually arrived while I was in the middle of posting these thoughts as a reply to a post about names and made-up words in sf and fantasy in the lj of author johncwright:I was a guest lecturer in a college class recently telling them about the fantasy ballet for which I wrote the plot and am now turning into a novel. I was asked to talk about my character names. My rules are simple: I make sure the names don't have too many syllables and names from the same culture should follow the same pronunciation rules, for instance, I might call two minor characters "Careth" and "Helica" or "Kareth" and "Helika" but not mixing the two. I avoid having names sound too much alike, and try to come up with things that English speakers have a good chance at pronouncing correctly without having to refer to a pronunciation guide.In some cases I use an actual human language as inspiration, for instance, one culture has a Nordic feel, so I used an English/Old Norse dictionary when brainstorming names. I wanted to make them easily pronounceable, though, so I played with a few elements from Old Norse words and altered spelling, shortened, and so forth.A recent fantasy book I started reading had lots of long Nordic names with many consonants. Sometimes a character had more than one name, and several of them started with the same letter. I found myself flipping back frequently to try to keep track of who was who, and got tired of it, though ultimately that wasn't the main reason I didn't finish the book.I adore Tolkien's names, and they're not terribly simple. But most writers can't pull that off. What really drives me up the wall is inconsistency in how names are to be pronounced, though that is more likely to happen in movies since reading the book, you'll pronounce it however makes sense to you.Obi-Wan (O-bee-wahn) and Qui-Gon (KWAI-gon), anyone?