usually something that loosely relates to the animal such as
pen pen for cube
blueness for yuka
glittery for chrissy
im tasty for goose
scraww for ceila
lighter for phoebe
hoppers is still default
and bobs is moo
why moo? because bob is weird
but then villagers adopt catchphrases
KEN, A MALE ROOSTER, SHOULD NOT BE SAYING WABBITNESS.
MOLLY SHOULD NOT SAY PEN PEN
I'm not creative with villager catchphrases and greetings.
When every my villagers ask for a catchphrase, I keep it the same thing or do something generic.
I remember when I had Hopper in acnl both his catch phrase and greeting was GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH (As long as I could make it)
In acnh O'Hare's catchphrase is "In my hat"
Sherb's is "when I die" (it's funny man lmao)
Rod's is "bruh"
O'Hare's greeting is "hello my friend"
Kiki's catchphrase is "when I sleep"
Lolly's is "unlike you"
Tom and Marshal got "in my hat" from O'Hare
Snake got "unlike you" from Lolly
Raymond got "bruh" from Rod
Muffy asked me the other day and I was trying to come up with something similar to her original catchphrase ("nightshade"), but then a balloon floated by and I caught myself typing "owo"... Drago now uses it too. lol
Edit: Whoops, I've been tricked. Didn't know this is still an NL thread. Ignore my reply, haha...
For greetings, variations of "hey", "hi", and "hello" depending on the villager type.
Catchphrases I do all the same as "doll". That's definitely my most favorite.
On a lark I gave Phil "bingobongo" because I'd been watching Steven Universe and I thought it would sound cute. Rodeo says "holy cow", Beardo greets with "cheerio" and says "hohoho" as his catchphrase, Papi says "hayo", Kid Cat says "cat-cha". So generally it's themed around the villager.
For Flurry, I made her catchphrase "Dewdrop", just cause I think she's adorable and it matches. I remember that Stinky's greeting is "Whaddup PUNK", and Benedict's greeting is "Shh, I can't see" XD
I just gave Bunnie the greeting "What's poppinnnnnnn?!"and it makes me laugh every time she talks to me. I'm looking forward to making more greetings in the future haha.
For catchphrases, I was messing around with the censoring as a joke but accidentally got the B word past (by putting an apostrophe at the end). Now 3-4 of my villagers are using it haha. I also made Pudge's catchphrase "69" as a joke, but I'm tired of it now.
I give my villagers nonsensical french sounds such as "c'est ca la la" and "ah la vraiment" "mais cherie" because I think it's cute to think of them pretending to speak french because they want to be fancy.