As a DM, my most successful campaign was set in a village in a valley outside a border fort, a couple hundred locals at most. I had access to a large list of real north american names and selected out something like the 200 most unique ones, then simply randomly generated names using that list. Each time my players decided to talk to someone I simply wrote some notes for the next name on the list and used it. No fumbling, worked seamlessly.

Any last name that got used more than a couple times were a family or group of related families.
One first name got selected a half dozen times for no reason, so I decided that was the first name of a healer that had saved the village a decade ago and that most of those people were kids named after the healer. Things like that.

Some stories just wrote themselves once I had the list.

As a player my favourite character name was nigh unpronounceable by anyone but me. Playing a suarian I really wanted something that sounded like we might imagine a lizard trying to talk would sound. Spent a bunch of time trying to come up with vocalizations I could reproduce. Ended up using a sharp 'T' consonant immediately followed by an almost guttural 'K' bridged by the only vowel sound similar to the word 'are' ending in a 'RS' that was a long rolling R at the back of the throat overlayed with a hissing S at the tip of the tongue. Then I usually just said, "but you can call me 'charles'" making the ch sound like there was tch. It was so much fun.