Populating a novel can demand quite a cast of characters. School friends, great-grandparents, pizza delivery boys, and the accident victim, along with the regular cast of major, minor, and walk-on characters who have to names, ages, ethnic extraction, and all the rest of the paraphernalia that comes with being alive.

Not only that, but they have to sound unique. Yes, in a given second-grade class there may be four Devons and six Ashleys (or whatever the top baby names were in 2002), but in a novel you don’t ask your reader to keep track of them.

The problem is, once I get on a roll, they all start popping out the same. I’ve got a Chloe, Kelly and Kayla in my work in progress, and Kelly and Kayla are sisters. Not going to work.

So my contribution to the never-ending search for unique names and characters, here are the best of the name sources from the web. Each one has something different to offer. No matter what your story, you can populate it here.

• Social Security Administration popular baby names — What name would be plausible for a 24-year-old woman in 1942? How about a 97-year-old man in 2046? If you want some connection to reality, 1880 to the present, this is your source. It ranks the top given names for boys and girls for each year, along with percentages of births and numbers of births.
• Think Baby Names — Generate a name by meaning, origin, popularity, or random. Popularity goes back to 1880 for United States (see the Social Security Administration site above), 1998 for Canada, England and Wales, Scotland, Sweden, and Australia (separate lists).
• Behind the Name: The etymology and history of first names — I love the variety of ethnic groups, including some obscure ones, along with Biblical Hebrew, Greek, Latin and English Bible, history, theology, literature, popular culture, mythology, and ancient. I use the middle name function to generate family names, too.
• Fantasy Name Generator — Not my cup of tea, exactly, but it makes me wish it were. Choose from consonant heavy, vowel heavy, long, short, medium, names with apostrophes or dashes; go for serious names or fun names; go for Japanese, Hawaiian, Pokemon, or Dragons of Pern.
• Fake Name Generator — If you really want to jump start a story, go to Your Randomly Generated Identity. Not only do you get a name (first and last) of the nationality and ethnic extraction of your choice, you get address, website, email address, password, phone, mother’s maiden name, MasterCard, Social Security Number, occupation, and UPS tracking number for a package that isn’t specified. Sounds like the beginning of a mystery or thriller.
• Seventh Sanctum — This one doesn’t stop at names (mostly fantasy sorts). It will generate and entire novel if you give it a chance. Genre, setting, characters, skills, technology, organizations, along with story prompts. You could spend many a rainy afternoon playing among the generators here.
• What to Expect — More baby names for the truly stuck, with a message board, browse the full list, and search for notable namesakes from stage and screen, among others.
• Facebook app — The Name Generator — I should have known there’s an app that has 463 billion different first and last names that you can access through Facebook. You can tag them and view names that others have tagged, which gives a sort of order to them. It’s not the same as asking for Greek and getting Greek, but you might want to come at it from a different direction.