Greyjoy Names ending with -on

[The Onion Kniggit]

Look at the targaeryens...all their names have the ae combo...danaerys..rhaenys..aegon...rhaegar.. same with other families, as some have mentioned. Just a culture thing i guess.

Rhae, Rhaelle, Rhaella.

Targaryens = Pokemons confirmed.

[Eden-Mackenzie]

He's a harlaw, not a greyjoy.

Theon's brother was named Rodrik.

I would venture a guess that Rodrik Greyjoy was named after his uncle, Rodrik Harlaw.

...Then again, the Stark names, especially among the major characters, are not nearly as consistent as anyone else's. My suspicion is that this is because GRRM came up with most of them before he'd really thought about names very much. (Jaime, Cersei, and many of the other main characters from the start of the story also don't work very well.)...

I agree with this, and I think it is likely the major characters were named, and then when he realized exactly how many non-major but oft-mentioned characters he was going to have to name, GRRM decided to make it easier on everyone to use naming patterns to help keep families straight, hence the repetitive Targ names, the similarities in the Martell and Greyjoy name endings, etc.

[Drazule]

Most Manderlys seem to have a Wy in thier name, plenty of Lannisters have a Ty in thier name, and the few Mormonts we've seen have some sort of jor sound to thier name.

They're just common naming conventions. Families have them, they don't need to follow them, but when you have 4+ kids, it makes thinking of names easier when you can start or end with the same syllable and work from there.

[falcotron]

I would venture a guess that Rodrik Greyjoy was named after his uncle, Rodrik Harlaw.

I agree with this, and I think it is likely the major characters were named, and then when he realized exactly how many non-major but oft-mentioned characters he was going to have to name, GRRM decided to make it easier on everyone to use naming patterns to help keep families straight, hence the repetitive Targ names, the similarities in the Martell and Greyjoy name endings, etc.

I'm kind of curious how far he worked out the patterns.

Looking at the Targ names more carefully, it seems like he may have taken a list of real 11th-century Anglo-Saxon names, and then applied somewhat systematic rules to them: k->s, r->rh, nC->n, one arbitrary open vowel->ae, try to drop in a y somewhere, and Vikerik becomes Viserys, Earik becomes Aerys, Eagon becomes Aegon, Reygar becomes Rhaegar, etc. I suppose I'd have to try to work out all the Targ names before being fully confident here, but it seems to work. Not quite Tolkien, but a lot more detailed than I expected.

Also, notice that this gives you much more relevant meanings for the names than just searching for the closest name in any language as on the various old threads and blog posts where people tried to dig up name meanings--Aemon means "law-protector" instead of "hidden eye", Viserys now has the wonderfully ironic meaning "victorious ruler" instead of "wooded valley", "Aegon" means "sword-edge" instead of "struggle", and Rhaegar means "advice-spear" instead of nothing.

So, if GRRM really put in that much work into (at least some of) his naming patterns, is the fact that the Ironborn (Greek) names don't seem to be related to the First Men (Celtic) names except for a few borrowings intentional, and meant to reinforce their myth that they were a separate migration to Westeros? That seems plausible... but if so, what would the WIldlings' Danish names mean? Or, for that matter, why would the Targaryens and the Andals both have Anglo-Saxon names, instead of the Targ names being related to the Free Cities (hyper-Latinized Romance names, or, often, words that aren't names)? So, it's probably more likely he just got carried away doing name research to fill out how patterns, but didn't actually put much thought into the relationships between them.