Using [and abusing] puns...

[ConnorSB]

Hey, every time guards come up in my game, the one that leaves to "alert the authorities" or "find someone who can make decisions" is always named Bob, and Tom is always the one that stays and doesn't say much. Always Tom and Bob. Always.

 

[Jolly Giant]

I've always avoided joke names for my characters and NPCs... With one exception! The second character I made in my RPG career was a bard named Sivle Artanis, he got quite a few laughs. In later years, bard NPCs have had an surprising tendency to have that exact same name... Curious.

 

[WARPED1]

I had one guy name his ranger Dairen N'dvidual
Then we had the npc, Bob the wonder dwarf, who had bright blue full plate and roller skates. Any encounter with him was sudden and quick. He would skate in, bash any monster on the head, then skate away.
I had a bard named Tremelo.............
One of my friends had a bard named Elfus.

 

[FireLance]

I've done pun names, but they tend to be very obscure and my players sledom catch them.

One of my best was the name of a high-level female elf diviner, Emilisalier Amiraiah, also known as the Indigo Lady because of her fondness for that colour.

Another was a half-celestial fey bard (very good with a fiddle) named Verenestra Lefay.

The biggest disaster at the Civic Festhall in Sigil in my campaign occured when they booked an undead choral group named "Siouxsie and the Banshees".

Of course, there was also the Rock Group, a band that composed hits such as "One Look in Medusa's Eyes" and "Body Rock".

Finally, my PC Fighter/Mage/Thief (this was in 2e) was fond of disguising himself as a twin-scimitar-wielding dark elf named "Grizzit Goget'em".

 

[SpringPlum]

In our current game, we have Smyth the smith and Paige the page.

 

[Arc]

For a Spycraft campaign I DMed, I had a 3 mission series in which the group had to assasinate a Serbian general. His name: Notmilo Sovich. Sadly enough, they didn't catch on until a little after they killed him. Then they tried to lynch me.

The agency that the group worked for (and that would betray them) was Leithold Services Group. I needed a name for a fake company, and my calculus textbook was nearby (written by Louis Leithold), so I grabbed the name. It took a few sessions for that lightbulb to turn on for the group.

My latest character is/was a frenzied berserker named Kyoshiro. I was reading Samurai Deeper Kyo at the time I picked up Complete Warrior, the concept came to me, and I knew I couldn't play it any other way.

 

[fba827]

The most blatant one I've ever done was a pair of low-level NPC clerics name Brother Korn and Brother Peaz.

(Why, yes, I was eating mixed vegetables when coming up with their names for the first time).

 

[Southern Oracle]

I have a player whose first character under me was named Resu Cigam (magic user backwards). I recognized that immediately, but it took me awhile to catch onto his next character in our Forgotten Realms game named Flenus (sun elf backwards).

Another player had a monk named Tiger Claw that only wore a loincloth. The other players took to calling the character "Tiger Thong."

 

[Cor Azer]

Through various campaigns, my friends have had:

Nonac, the barbarian
Xevaj, a cleric
Tfolnevar, (the t is silent)
Hugh the dwarf
Alfredo (who we always referred to as Fettucini)

No real pun names, but plenty of less than serious ones.