Since I'm familiar with lift-json, I'll show you how to do it with that library.
import net.liftweb.json.JsonDSL._
import net.liftweb.json.JsonAST._
import net.liftweb.json.Printer._
import net.liftweb.json.JObject
val json: JObject = "names" -> List("Bob", "Andrea", "Mike", "Lisa")
println(json)
println(pretty(render(json)))
The names -> List(...) expression is implicitly converted by the JsonDSL, since I specified that I wanted it to result in a JObject, so now json is the in-memory model of the json data you wanted.
pretty comes from the Printer object, and render comes from the JsonAST object. Combined, they create a String representation of your data, which looks like
{
"names":["Bob","Andrea","Mike","Lisa"]
}
Be sure to check out the lift documentation, where you'll likely find answers to any further questions about lift's json support.