Hello, do you mind if i ask a question? I see that for yowapeda ocs ppl use japanese names for characters/teams. Im not too familiar with japanese, is there a process you go through w finding names? Sorry for bothering.
i never mind receiving questions!
i don't know about other people, but here's how i figured mine out:
first off i figured out where i wanted my team to be from, and chose enoshima cause its a part of japan im vaguely familiar with
note: if youre making teams with friends, look into prefectures! only one team from each prefecture competes in the inter-high each year, so if your teams share a prefecture, they cant compete against each other at the in-high. enoshima is in the same prefecture as hakone, but i made mine working under the assumption that canon teams and characters dont co-exist with my ocs. if you want your ocs to cycle alongside hakogaku (kanagawa prefecture), sohoku (chiba) and kyoufushi (kyoto), youll want to make them from a different prefecture
when it comes to naming individual characters my personal methods vary
for my bike ocs, i wanted a bit of a theme throughout, so all of their names can shorten to various onomatopoeia that fit them, so finding names was a little more difficult for my idiots
in yowapeda, lots of the characters have names that fit their skills (onoda sakamichi is p much 'hilly mcslope')
mostly when im naming characters in any language, i go to a name site (usually i use behindthename) and scroll through lists and lists of names and their meanings. when it comes to japanese names specifically, behind the name doesnt have a very big list, so consider just googling 'japanese names' and mess around with google translate
do some research, basically. figure out what japanese names work. i personally wouldn't make up a name from scratch that 'sounds japanese' because that comes across pretty racist, but if you want to put bits of names together because the meaning is better, i.....think thats ok? lots of manga has characters with names like that. but im not japanese so i cant really speak with authority on the matter
also, keep in mind your characters dont have to be japanese, or can be mixed-race! one of the enoshima team members, my flatmates character gil, is french, and has a french name (guillame) matched with a japanese surname (ueda), and it works great in my opinion
basically my answer is just research tbh, it's vital in character construction anyway imo