My characters’ names mean a lot to me. In some cases, their names were chosen years before the story takes shape. Most of them have some kind of symbolic or punny meaning (giving material for future English teachers whose students won’t believe the interpretation). For example, my girl genius detective is Lori Barrow. It’s an ordinary, kind of plain-Jane name, which it should be–she’s unusual in too many ways to need a strange name. Barrow, though, has meaning to me. I did field work in the Arctic community of Barrow, Alaska– and a more remote, inhospitable, yet oddly-appealing polar wasteland you have never imagined. Which is sort of how I see Lori’s personality 
The secondary characters all have somewhat meaningful names as well. My favorite professor is called Wigbert van Gnubbern–and at some point he mentions that his early life was hard because of his “terrible name.” He insists that everyone call him Bert.
The characters wouldn’t be the characters without their special names. And if you all want something truly wonderful to read: Charles Passage wrote a book about character names in Dostoyevsky’s novels. It came out when I was a kid and affected me greatly.
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