I always make a male and female character and give them the same name from my other games if possible (I gave them personality/backstories in my head, dont ask). And sometimes I make multiple characters from different classes, species, races, skin colors etc. and if I feel creative, their back story/bio. Helps if one is a creative person that likes to write stories.
FINALLY, I’m not the only one.
It’s actually what gave my egg the last kick it needed. I was getting bored with always playing the nice, naive protagonist and wanted something different with my Dragon Age 2 playthrough. So I spent an entire evening making my fem-Hawke, searching for a name and making up a personality and was really satisfied with my creation.
Well, 2 weeks later it dawned on me that I didn’t really create a personality, but instead just subconsciously gave her my own, which I was keeping buried under a big pile of denial and ignorance. Turns out that you don’t have to be very feminine and cute to be a trans woman.
And to put the cherry on top: I also liked the name so much that exactly 10 years later now, I’m finally gonna make it my official one (well, with 1 letter changed).
The end.
One of my friends did similar, kept making different versions of the same character for D&D until he realised he didn't want to play the character, he wanted to be him.
Which was good, because I found his character really boring next to stuff like the unreasonably sexy paladin, swamp gnome, or legally-not-evil cat. His PCs are much better now, the fire-fighting rat is very entertaining.