How to find character names for novel writing

My stories have a lot of characters and a metric ton of name references. Because I enjoy writing in the speculative non-fiction style, I often embed quotes, writings, reports and such, each “attributing” to a name. I prefer that over something generic like, “said one soldier.” Granted there are times when “said one ___” works perfectly well, if not better than a name, especially when faster pacing is needed.  But in most instances, I like name dropping for the sense of realism. Also, because there are times when I like what the person did and may want to call on them again later.

That means I need to create hundreds of names. As my stories take place in the future and span the solar system I also need names that cross borders and ethnicities. It’s fine to have an Anderson or a Thompson in there, but I also need a Somchai, Volodin or Zejun. Then, mix them up. Prawit Thompson. Andrea Volodin. Fadil Zejun. In my future world-building, the solar system is a melting pot. So too should be the character names. 

A good source for names

For years I used the CIA Fact Book World Leaders website as the source for names. It was great. You could pick a country and see all its cabinet leaders. Mix/match/win! Based on the character I could grab a first name from India, last name from Indonesia. Whatever worked. Mostly I take current politics/religion out of the choice I make as my stories are far enough in the future that I don’t dream to speculate where tensions will be by then. 

Unfortunately not long ago, the CIA Fact Book changed its website and my source went away. Not happy! They still have (some) names listed by country, but you have to dig for them:

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/political-parties-and-leaders/

Recently I found a resource that is much better:

https://aleph.occrp.org/datasets/1305

On the OCCRP Aleph website you can really dig into each country and get creative.

If you need character names, I highly recommend it.