Sally
and that brings us to another point, names. How do people go about picking/creating names,
Leia
With difficulty. It's something I find a pain in the backside. I tend to modify ordniary real-world names or recombine bits of two or more different ones. Respell things. My Welsh names book has been used to death - mostly respelled.
David Here is a suggestion you might find useful for generating sf names: Arrange the consonants in some sort of order from 0 to 9, pick a number, convert the digits in said number to consonants, then insert vowels as appropriate.
One system and mnemonic I use arranges the consonants as follows:
0 Z, C, S, Ts, Dz (Z for zero) 1 T, D, Th (T contains one down-stroke) 2 N, NG (N has two strokes) 3 M (three strokes) 4 R (last letter in fouR) 5 L (Latin for fifty) 6 Sh, Ch, Zh, J (no easy mnemonic) 7 K, G, Kh (K is a seven leaning against a wall) 8 F, V (Hand-written lower-case F looks like an eight) 9 P, B (P looks like a mirrored nine)
Now pick a number: 74217; convert to consonants: K R N T K; and insert vowels: KRiNToK. This gives Mr. Krintok's surname. Once the basic material is discovered, the name can be tweaked as appropriate, and meanings inserted.
As for the name Servalan, I think of it as coming from serf: most everyone is her serf / servant; she is a serf to her outer nature, and so on.
Also, a clue is given in Gambit that the name Servalan is related to Service, when Krantor pauses in the following sentence:
Krantor: What is this life if we cannot be of some service to our fellows?
DC