How to name a character

One of my friends, the terrific story writer Tony Bukoski, sometimes uses the names of his friends as characters in his fiction as a sly practical joke. And Stephen King, among other authors, has occasionally auctioned off for charity the right to have a character named for the high bidder. Here’s a new wrinkle: Charles Salzberg, as he notes in the New York Times, is simply too lazy to come up with a bunch of names. Plus, he decides, it might help to promote his novel.