These days when I play, which isn't terribly often, I often pull characters verbatim out of "The Silmarillion". Of course this is on less rp-oriented muds, if I wanted to play house with some 40 year old truckdriver living in his parents' ****-soaked basement, I'd just go do that and save on the electric bill of MUSHing. But back to silmarillion, most the characters in there have their own plethora of names, so one can pick one of the less well-known of these, and that way it's almost like a "secret" that you're ripping them off (for example, play as Thingol but name yourself Elwe). Most the character types worth playing (minus minor variations and eccentricities) are covered in silm, and it saves a lot of effort coming up with your own traits (holy crap, some people put so much effort into this "hobby" that it's obvious they have absolutely no life and that they have never actually worked a day during their miserable worthless existence!)