Okay, I recently I noticed I have another habit with the game.

Having played the same sort of hood which same sort of sims each reboot, creating a complete different hood has become difficult. I often use the common English name list, i.e mongabay ) which is the site I personally use because I prefer using english (UK/US) names on my sims, but some of the surnames I always associate with sims in my custom hood, so each time I create a DIFFERENT sim with same surname, my brains keep creating the character I used in my premodern hood, like for example I always give my green farmers Graham and McDonalds as lastnames because I like those lastnames on these sort of sims (yes, I AM a generic person and like stereotypes ), which is a abit irrating because I wanted to create NEW sims with different lifes. I have been trying random generators but I find many of the suggestions a bit "wacky" (same with the premades), because I dont like them to be too random as I easily grown tired of sims like that, I like to have connection/reasons to create each sims as invidual.(Sure I play their life time faster than others on here, but creating same sim over and over again for a long time period, I find some connection of who-they-are that I cant forget).

Now unlike simmers who play small hoods, mine are always large and its many invidual sim I create (my current one has 50 fonders, so 50 family names with different indentities) so this issue that can get a bit big. Given/First name are easier as I dont connect with that as much. Doesnt anyone else have this dilemma when choosing names, surname especially? How you usally choose them?

Im trying to create a new hood where I create single sims who find their own spouse but I dont want to use same sims as my premade hood, but it feels my brain has glued towardss the ones Ive been playing for almost 2 years now.

Think about the way surnames came about. They weren't always arbitrary. Once a society starts having conventional names instead of each individual getting a unique one (which was probably pretty early), they needed additional identifiers so they could talk about Dave the Smith and not get him mixed up with Dave, Mary's boy, or No-Good Dave the Moocher. And they came up with these identifiers the same way we come up with them to distinguish between the three Mikes in the office - by whatever trait the listener would most readily identify with that person. In the office, I used to refer to the three Mikes as Mike C, Mike D, and Mike Mc, because we all knew their last names, but to somebody in a different department they might be Tall Mike, Short Mike, and Old Mike; while elsewhere they presumably had different casts of Mikes to be distinguished from, so Mike C might have been known as David's Mike (i.e. David's son Mike) to distinguish him from Jane's Mike (i.e. Jane's husband Mike) in the bosom of his family, and Barbeque Mike at church because he's always the one who organizes the meat at the annual retreat.

So instead of Graham and McDonald, name your farmers Green, Farmer, Tomato, Orchard. Pick the lot they'll live on before naming them and name them after some identifiable feature of the property and surroundings - Whitehouse, Riverbend, Beach. Arbitrarily decide their father's name and use a patronymic - or a matronymic if that works better. Give them professional names. Name them for eye color, hair color, favorite color. Name them for most extreme personality points - Friendly, Neatnik, Shyguy.

Or give in to your inner joker and make them all puns, or in-jokes of some kind that only you would find funny.

I find inspiration from everywhere. Place names, noted people in history, etc.

So many different ways.

Sometimes, I'll see a name I like.
Sometimes, I use a random name generator.
Sometimes, I'll do research if I imagine the person coming from a certain part of the world, and I use names from that part.
Sometimes, I'll use related names, as Peni suggested. A free-spirited hippie nature lover in my game has the last name of Flowers, for instance.
Seasons, months, places, etc. ... I've used those, too.
And sometimes, I'll make names up. I look at whatever is on the desk or TV and chop up syllables. For instance, right now, I see a cup, a wrapper, my sparkling water and paper. A last name, for instance, could very well be something like Cuperspaer. Admittedly, that was not a great effort. I did that one quickly. But some names I actually do like!

Well, For me I have a tendency to actually go online on the international surname lists. This caused by I want my sims to be from many different places in the world.

ex. I have a family called Jensen - what is a danish surname.

Then I have Jenson - what is norwigian,

But I can also go for Johnson - what is english.

As of I have tried to go for De'Black, Mae'seke etc.

I just know that you can't use the familyfund cheatcode on people there have 2 or more surnames ^^'
So my Royal Fluff family is quite poor xD

anyway, I hoped this maybe help you

I do the same with front names

My surnames are completely uninspired I just use the surnames of random people I meet (Oh, that is a surname I have never used in Sims! "How do you do?")

Sometimes I just put words together, Or just think of some sounds I like. So for instance I once had a family named the Caryle family. They were inspired actually from the last name of a character from a movie...I think the movie was Elisium. His last name was CarlyLe but I thought it was Caryle. Sometimes I use celebrities last names. Other last names I have had that came from "sounds" Aferii, Winders. I really liked the idea of double f's or i's like Afferi or Aferii. Usually If I like a character, celebrity, or person even I know I use their last name. Or if I am "bulk" creating sims like for a neighborhood I use an online surname generator.

Since the last few sims I created in CAS, and hence had to find a surname for, were Sally Mander, Mildew Moose and Diarrhoea Dogstain, I'm possibly not the best person to answer the question.

For modern hoods I find inspiration everywhere. Either with real people I know, online generators, or like in my new hood, I used youtube vlogger last names. For my medieval hood I tend to go with really basic names that were used back then that were in relation to their career (though I rarely make it official lol) ie. Miller/Baker. I also take from a lot of novels that are based in pre-modern eras. Namely Game of thrones (of course) and others. But mainly I use a lot of generators and whichever one sounds good I use

I use common last names, lists of last names found by searching for that exact term, and anything else I can think of. I've even named families after the names of places in California when really stuck (No not the large well-known ones like Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, etc.).

I also have this list added to the game, which handles townies and other game-generated Sims quite nicely: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=383239

Handy naming trick: Keep a few dictionaries on hand. Different kinds of dictionaries, anything that deals with etymology. When in doubt, pick one up. Is there a Russian form of Graham? What would be the equivalent of "McDonald" in Welsh? What's the Bantu word for "Farmer?" What's the genus name for "chicken," or "Dog," or "some bird that raids crops?"

Many of my names are uninspired, I am often looking up baby names right after a sim has a baby. Some families have quirky or international names and those I find easier to Google, some I know will have down to earth names but others I struggle with. My author sons are Doyle and Dexter which I thought was slightly quirky, like she is. My Doctor named her children after scientists. But Google is my friend on names quite frequently.

Peni Griffin.
As its many names my hoods need, I prefer keep it more simple because constantly looking up what their names mean are too time consuming. I guess Im a bit similare to deadhead_kay as I often choose names based don ther relations to their career or lifestyle. I.e. Baker - Culinary, Smith - Business, Norton - Science. (John Smith, anyone?. )

But I dont like it too literally or "silly" (jokes/puns/after color/personally). Probably why I dont like the maxi hood that much (.ie. Brooke, Green etc)

I have a tendency to look to various forms of media for my names. I'll think of characters from movies, tv shows, or other video games and use those. I'll also use the names of actors, musicians, or even athletes that I like. Sometimes I just come up with something generic and use that. Like for example one name that I seem to use a lot is Random, I've used the name Joe Random several times in my Sims games. I've also used the names Something, Someone, and Somebody. If all else fails I just think of common last names like Smith or Jones and use those.

I always go with the names from the top of my head. I recently started a BACC and I was SUPER original and named one Sim Indiana Jones and another one Johnny Cash. I also tried to go with characteristics, so the Cash family will be mostly busy with business opportunities. I also have two free-spirited brothers who I gave the surname 'Blunt' which describes perfectly what they do on a daily basis.

http://www.behindthename.com/random/

I went so far as to download and put into a randomizer program the top 100 most popular male and female first names from the US Census bureau, and that's kept me naming my various pixels unique names..I've not had a similarly named pixel in any game so far. Also found the most popular and common last names (only American, though) so it's generated quite a number of good sets of names.

By the way, I do use "Hook's Randomizer" from MATY, so it's pretty good-and you can change the parameters of it at the drop of a hat. Great for lists of names, etc.

I just use my inner feelings."Oh, this sim looks like Oscar. What his kids can be? Leonardo and Brie?"

Emmy and Tony, surely?

It typically depends on a lot of things. If I'm going for a modern style family, I tend to just pick them out from my head. I always get flumped with naming babies, especially when the baby isn't the gender I was expecting, or if they were twins and I wasn't expecting twins. So my Ki Booker (I don't know where Ki came from, but Booker came from BioShock because I was looking at my games to find inspiration) had a girl, who I called Perri, and then she had twins, one called Fitch (because I'd just finished playing Silent Hill Homecoming and one of the families in that is called Fitch), and the other was Bronn (named after the mercenary in Game of Thrones.) I try not to go with any generic names, like if I'm making a Japanese female in CAS, I wouldn't call her Sakura, Yuki, Mio, etc, because they're so generic, unless I was specifically making like Sakura from Naruto or something.
I recently made a family of four who had quite an interesting backstory in my head. I can't remember the dad's name, but the surname was Grey (because I looked at a book by S.L Grey for inspiration), but his wife is called Kitten, and the idea is that they fell in love because they're so different. She's a relatively poor alternative fashion designer who changed her name to Kitten as soon as she turned 18. Their daughter is called Lelianna (both a mixture of Leliana from Dragon Age and also partially Liliana from Magic the Gathering), which is shortened to Lily, or Anna. The only thorn in the family's side is the dad's mother, who is from old money and highly disapproves of Kitten and her background. Her name is Georgiana (taken from Pride and Prejudice). So for this family I decided to make it quite obvious where inspiration for the names was coming from.

If I need names from a specific culture, I use one of these two sister sites. (I originally found them while looking up the meanings of some of my ancestors' surnames.)

First names
http://www.behindthename.com/

Surnames
http://surnames.behindthename.com/

I get my names from beloved classic literature for sims living in small countryside and/or rural neighborhoods. Those tend to be neighborhoods that have no real period in time, so I rather enjoy imagining it being set in the past, but with some modern comforts...though not too many. For my more modern suburban themed neighborhoods, sims names are just random and usually based on personality, existing family names (I like to sometimes name children after their grandparents) or just names I'm fond of.

For surnames, I just pick randomly from my head. Recently, however, I wanted to create a Sim from Iceland so looked at the credits after an Icelandic TV programme I'm watching. Other examples, I created a new Sim who built a cabin in the woods and called him Carpenter, another Sim with black hair with the surname Black. As suggested above, depends on the 'nationality', personality, etc.

That's not true You can family fund a family with two surnames, but you have to write the name properly. I hardly ever use it so I don't remember what it is you have to add around the name, but I do know it's possible.

Lately my main inspiration for names are doctors and patients I meet during placements at hospitals and doctors offices. I have a page in my notepad devoted to names I came across that I want to include in Sims. As I was creating my naming mod and setting up my hood, I used various lists of most common names in different places. Sometimes if I'm feeling uninspired, I ask friends or my sister to name the Sim/pet.

If the household is named "Lack of Ideas", then you would type:
familyfunds "Lack of Ideas" [insert amount here]

I usually use surnames of people I have met/heard about. If I'm stuck, I may google something. Sometimes, I want to create "foreign" Sims, in which case I google first names and surnames of the desired nationality.
However, I recently named a sim "Estonia" (yes, as in the country Estonia). I don't know why, but I just looked at her face and the only word that I could think of was "Estonia". I was pleased to know that people are actually naming their kids after Pokémon, because it meant I'm not crazy for naming her after a country