My main character is also named after a certain character from the Lovecraft Mythos (who's name you should never say *grin*) but with a very deliberate spelling. I troll around every once and a while on the armory page to keep an eye on other people who have picked up the same name. Lots of people chose the correct spelling and as such get caught up in the sea of the masses. Most of my alts follow a pattern where they borrow a significant part of the main's name but change it to make laughs (Ex. The rogue is called Hastab, (Holy) paladin is called Hasteal. Books are absoluteley a great place to find (or adapt) great names.

Most of my toons are references to things Hunter Thompson wrote. Very few people make the connection, put occasionally I'll get complimented on name choice on an alt of mine who I have in a vanity guild. Name: Raoulduke Guild: Fear and Loathing.

Oh I love Lovecraft... It's a shame that when you mention Lovecraft to anyone on WARcraft they think you're making a pun... :(

Also, it's too bad I already made my Death Knight on my home realm, once the patch hits, I'll probably make an undead DK on a new realm named HerbertWest... :P

Well, I can't complain about Lovecraftian names, playing Miskaton and Deepone ;)

Most of my character names are either references to something, or creations of my random name generator:

http://www.ajs.com/~ajs/cgi-bin/mkname.cgi

which does an excellent job of starting me off on ideas, though I rarely use something directly from it.

I only have one toon named after a character in a book.

I'm a huge fan of Robert Jordan so I wanted to name my DK after my favorite character from the wheel of time series. I was going to pick Lanfear but the name was taken. So I did the next best thing and named the DK Cyndane.

( Cyndane is Lanfear's name after she gets killed and resurrected by the Dark One... fitting. )