I've found that unless you prepare for everything the players can throw at you, or at minimum cover the basics of every approach, they will force you to improvise something from wholecloth once a session at minimum. Having something to start off of is a lot better than having to start from nothing though, since you don't have to come up with a name on the fly and define the basic backstory like age, ethnicity and employment.
Oh, and if you are hard up for names, try Behindthename.com's random name generator. It's got dozens of existing languages/cultures that you can pick and choose from and there are links for short blurbs about the history of each name. Unfortunately, most of the available cultures are European, but that's a small flaw compared to what you can get out of it.
Oh, and if you are hard up for names, try Behindthename.com's random name generator. It's got dozens of existing languages/cultures that you can pick and choose from and there are links for short blurbs about the history of each name. Unfortunately, most of the available cultures are European, but that's a small flaw compared to what you can get out of it.