I've seen threads on what everyone's favorite archtype are but I was wondering how everyone comes up with names for their characters & maybe why (or if) those names have any special meanings.

I tend to go for a theme when I name a character. Hackers & technomancers will almost always have a name that alludes to computer programs or terminology or names meaning something about the mind. Shamans tend to have names that reference their totem somehow and mages tend to be named for an element. Sometimes their ethnicity comes into play (although usually I pick the name then the ethnicity). On a rare occasion, I pick a name just because it sounded neat at the time. What about you guys?

For my characters:

Bitesized: A hacking reference, as well as a reference to being the family runt. A human raised by trolls.

J.D. : Stood for 'jane doe', this is the streetname of my escaped clone.

Black Dahlia : The character's name was Dahlia, and she had a penchant for biological terrorism. And infecting doorknobs with super bacteria.

Doc Stevens : Ex-doc wagon doctor who lost her license.

I've had over the years: Ruby (Technomancer, named for a perl program), Kali (Indian-American gun adept with a violent temper), Tala (Navajo Moon Maiden shaman), Kinezumi (half-Japanese Rigger, squirrel themed for some reason), Ember (fire mage), Lenore (Raven Shaman), & Suzuka (Japanese phoenix shaman) to name a few. Our games are always short lived so I tend to invent a lot of characters.

Seriously Mike - because, seriously. Sometimes verbal tics are your most recognizable feature, like Desu from Rozen Maiden.
Kestrel - her codename in the military as the leader of Kestrel Squad was "Kestrel One".
Lex - that's a diminutive of her real name, Alexandria.
And from my players, Sunshine - because there's no grumpier dwarf in LA. Someone called her "a real sunshine" sarcastically, and it stuck.

Usually something that helps me remember who/what the character is supposed to be . .
A Troll Archer named Robin Blood for example.
Smiley, an Ork-Face(don't ask, yes, it works surprisingly well somehow) with a distinctive scar on one side of the face that makes it look like he's giving a cynical smile . .
Dead-Eye Flint. Eyes tricked out and additional eye in the back of the neck to make trickshots possible and being surprised from behind impossible.
Van. A Troll like a. Has a License-Plate from one he had a collision with and walked away to tell about it . . the driver did not.
Some Characters come with literally DOZENDS of Names, because they all fit. Stealth, Shadow, Kage, etc. for example. These are usually infiltration specialists.
The Troll-Twins Ultra and Over Kill. Heavy Weapons and Launch-Weapons.
Mole, a Dorf Shaman specializing in Shape-Earth and other such things.
Sable/Sabre/-Rider, a Bike-Riding Sword-Fighter.
The Troll only known as "Oh god no, please no, not again!" After he had aquired both Heavy Military Armor and a Minigun with enough tricks to get the TN to hit down to reasonable Levels.
Magnus the Red. A bronze-skinned cyclopian Mage.
DDW(Dead Dorf Walking) a Dorf Ghoul Adept.

The List would go on and on and on and on ad nauseum, but i recently managed to lose my 200+ character collection -.-

I had a Kestrel too. I had picked the name because of the bird. I figured somehow a tiny hawk was fitting theme for a new gun adept who was quick to strike. She also has the honor of being the only surviving runner in the campaign's failure.

Right now I have a Filipino mage named Nenita which means 'Little Girl' (a nickname given to her by her contact because she's pretty damn short for an elf).

As far as "real" names, I've got a stable of them that I've generally attached to certain types of personalities/archetypes that I've been recycling through pen and paper, CRPG, and MMO characters for quite some time.

I've only come up w/ one good street name for my 3 current SR4 characters. I'm thinking a good one for my ambidextrous, chromed out street sam w/ heavy kendo and iaido training is Niten Bushi (two heavens warrior), or just Niten or Two Heavens.

I was going to go w/ Schatenbrut (as a German bastardization of Shadowspawn) for my ex-SK sniper/infiltrator that I'm sposed to start playing in a couple weeks but not really happy w/ it.

Well, you'll need another T in Schaten, Sid

For real names, I pick what sounds good, depending on the ethnicity and country where the character comes from. Babynames.com is a great resource for me
Street names is another beast.
First, I decide where the handle comes from. Did the character choose it by him/herself? Was it given by another person, maybe a nickname?
So, currently, I have a few different characters.
Snow doesn't have a real name. He's an amnesiac for a lot of events in his life. He does remember a father figure though, who called himself Snow, and he decided to use this name as his own.
Colonel Panic is an ork hacker, real name James Mooncrow, a Salish ork. He adores the old school and it's his online handle. Kernel Panic *nudge nudge wink wink*
White Queen called herself that, after a half-joke by one of her friends on how she's got ice in her veins and she's a regular snow queen. Her real name is Madeleine Porter, a New Orleans native. She can be a manipulative bitch sometimes. Also, I like the marvel character and a long while after I created her, I noticed the similarities (platinum blonde hair, charisma out the wazoo, etc.)
Jazz actually has two street names, none of which she decided on herself. Her first one was Blues. She's a changeling with blue skin, so it's kind of obvious. Jazz doesn't have anything to do with music, but it is a coincidence that it fits so well together with Blues. The first fake SIN she used had the first name Jessica, so it was shortened to Jazz. Her real name is Samantha Hamilton, just a generic CAS name, nothing to do with her mixed heritage of half-Asian and half-Latin American parents.

An example from the NPC side would be Britta Svensdottir (swedish heritage) a mystic adept, calling herself Valkyrie. Kinda obvious, but then stereotypes are to be used for a reason

She's a former paratrooper, so the "bird of prey" name fits here as well. She also drops from the sky to kill you dead. (but she turned out to be the party tank, only ten dice on ranged attacks without hardware bonuses, but IIRC unmodified soak pool is close to twenty - either 18 or 21)

Their "Non-Street-Names" are usually derived from their "Street-Names" in my case.
Smiley: Smedley Winston.
Van: Vanice (i actually forgot his last name, shame on me)
etc.

Horified to see so many Kestrels!
To be fair Street sam turned fixer Lady Kestrel used to be Decaff, a runaway from a cult so footloose strict they pretty much banned everything, that of course was before the sex change. The graceful bird reference was aspirational. She did run by MsEri for a brief period
Sidewalk was a smarter than average street gang punk
Grendel, the munchkin archer with a viking fetish
Everyone must have had a wetwork specialist called Nightwing by now
Retro the dwarf decker (no, not hacker, although that does show my age)
Crimson was always borderline loon, even before she met her totem after years of being a Street Sam

My best ones are street names that were earned.

Invisible Jasmine - Her real name was Jazmyne Donavan and her street name was Jazz. However, I overused her invisibility spell, spending the majority of runs in this state, and my fellow runners started calling her Invisible Jasmine.

Shockwave - David Davenport (I don't recall his original street name) loved making things go boom. However, his player (me) misinterpreted a poorly drawn map and thought a biker bar was twice as large as the gm had intended. Well, the semi auto fire from a GL-6 made quite an impression. As my team had escaped out the front door while I provided cover fire, the rest of the building went under some major interior redecorating. Did I mention I was using the HE Offensives from FoF? After the shockwaves bounced off all the walls, plus the original blast (since I was twice as close as I thought), everyone was dead and Davenport was thrown out the front door on his back, possibly due to Hand of God, I don't recall the exact damage. There, lying on his back, clinging to life, his teammate looks at him and says flatly "Nice goin, 'Shockwave.'". (I still think the lack of leniency on my misinterpretation, was the gm's payback for Dragon Slayer.)

Dragon Slayer - Darian Jacobs was one of my PCs pride and joy of min/max-ing the most elite shadowrunner ever. Or so I am told. I was running COD (I believe from Shadows of the Underworld?), where the runners have to deliver a package to an unknown contact. Upon meeting the contact, the team demands to know what's in the case, as they were attacked during the delivery. The contact gets angry, and they won't back down.
The contact turns out to be an eastern great dragon, the package a dragon egg. He morphs into great dragon form and demands the egg (which at this point is still in the teams van). The team scatters, hiding behind cars or just start running without looking back, the people in the streets panick, and do the same. Not Darian Jacobs. He pulls out his Ruger Thunderbolt and aims for the dragons face. The other players as well as myself wremind him that its a great dragon several times, but he is insistent that he is bad ass and going to shoot him in the face. He laughs as he rolls his combat pool enhanced attack. Uses karma to reroll failures, even against suggestions of saving it for defense, but he is convinced the dragon will he dead. In one burst fire. From a pistol. After easily reducing the damage, Jacobs only reply was to suddenly stop laughing and I believe the quote was "Oh, shit." The great dragon open hand slapped him across the face, throwing him across the street and onto the hood of a car where two of his teammates were hiding behind. There, clinging to life by the Hand of God, his teammate says, "Way to go, 'Dragon Slayer.'"

Josh's Tiger - Josh made tiger shape shifter physad with a long name no one else could pronounce, let alone remember. In fact, when the character sheet was misplaced, I don't recall if he even remembered. So the other characters started calling him, in character, Josh's Tiger, which is now and forever his street name.

Omni: My hacker. Her name means "all" which I applied to information. She has a bit of an ego, and to paraphrase "takes all information as hers"

Taking a common word and running it through a translation dictionary can also come up with an interesting name.

Teufel: German for devil. Adept gang leader focusing on stealth and melee. Got his name from the survivors of a massacre his gang initiated. Tends to wear an ornate mask that has a variety of sensors and gas mask built in. Likes to terrorize his opponents.

1) Professor. An archaeologist in the shadows hunting the criminal mastermind who framed him for theft and murder and ruined his career.

2) Quick Willie. Ork razor boy -- more for his temper than for his enhancements.

3) Stogie and Jake. Farmer/shepherd and his dog, the only thing left from the ranch a mining corp manipulated out from under him. Out for payback on corps in general.

4) Cactihuetzi. Free Spirit of Aztec tradition. Name in Nahuatl means "There is Stillness", which is a bit of a joke, since in almost every run the sneakiness gives way to "Karl Kombat Mage".

Hmm. That really depends on the character. Some of my more recent builds:

Grave ... Hacker-adept, real name Ian Tombs - but his street name has nothing to do with his surname, it's more about his demeanor (he's a cross between Columbo and Oscar the Grouch): very serious and, well, grave.

Soylent .... ghoul "parkour-adept" (melee, stealth, and "high road" gymnastics). Name is the blindingly obvious reference you might expect it to be; he's a 2D, pre-awakening film buff.

Frost .... very young (14-ish) melee adept, with "Elemental Strike (Cold)". So, again, the blindingly obvious choice.

Ozymandias ... elf Face-adept, real name Archimedes Pike. Overblown and overconfident sort of person. Name not his own choice, he still hasn't quite pegged to why a former compatriot insisted on using it for him ... hehehe.

Thorin Bright .... dwarf sniper; going with a stereotypical "dwarven" name amuses him.

Fisher ... a tween-aged Technomancer I'm currently working out (sort of an SR2/SR3 Otaku sort); Info Savant stream. Name is a reference to a fisherman and his nets - the water flows through the nets, and the interesting bits - fish - are what's taken up by the fisherman.