For several years, hmturnbull.com was focused mainly on reviewing books, movies and television. Since then, a number of things have changed in my life, and my goal of writing fiction has become more of a priority.
For a long time, I’ve wanted to shift the focus of this website towards not only my own work, but also articles and resources that I hope will help other aspiring fantasy writers.
Also, I designed a logo for myself, which you can see here.
This article is among the first of these resources. I’ve struggled in the past with making up character names that I like the sound of, but over time I began to learn some techniques that have so far worked for me. In this article I will share some of these techniques.
I hope that this article will show you that there are better ways to make up character and place names than simply mixing up letters or adding “-onius” to the end of a modern name. Even a passing knowledge of linguistics—particularly the study of sounds—is a powerful tool for inventing names.