Does George RR Martin ever use a name twice ?

[Feologild]

Or does he have a different name for every character. For instance are there more than one character named Margaery  or Jamie ?

[KingMance]

A whole lot of Pate and Walder.

[Philokles]

Yes. I can think of 5 or 6 characters called Jon off the top of my head. 4 Roberts, lots of Aegons.

[kissdbyfire]

Daemon, Aegon, Theon, and many, many more. 

Not even sure there's more than one Daemon, but tons of  Targ names repeated. 

[Philokles]

4 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Not even sure there's more than one Daemon, but tons of  Targ names repeated. 

John the Fiddler was also a Daemon. There's Daemon Sand too.

[Praetor Xyn]

Yes. He also refuses names across stories. In A Song for Lya the main characters are named Robb and Lyanna. Sound familiar?

[The Fattest Leech]

Nymeria= historic Queen from the Rhoyne, the Sand snake, and the wolf pup.

[Seams]

I suspect he is trying to help readers keep track by using repeats only when it is necessary for the plot (such as the Walders or the Brandons) or when he is trying to create a symbolic connection - there was a Joffrey and a Tommen back in earlier history, and I imagine each of the previous men of those names had a characteristic that GRRM wants to evoke in the characters of the current stories.

There are also characters with similar names - Theon points out that Asha and Osha have similar names. Sometimes the reason for the similarities is not yet clear.

In his book Dying of the Light, there is a culture in which men choose a new name when they go through a certain ritual. One of the characters explains that the new name is often made using and recombining syllables from the names of heroes from past generations. So that may explain a lot of the sound-alike names in the Targaryen line or the Lannister family.

But there are also some symbolic name groups in the ASOIAF books, I suspect - Will, Wyllis, Wylla, Willow, etc. There is a bunch of Jeynes. A lot of crones seems to have names ending in -ella.

There are also characters named after things - Satin, Leathers, Nail, Pyg, Hayhead, etc. These are also symbolic choices.

 

[kissdbyfire]

1 hour ago, Horse of Kent said:

John the Fiddler was also a Daemon. There's Daemon Sand too.

Cheers. Couldn't remember if the fiddler was and was too lazy to check!

 

[Curled Finger]

How about Brandon and Tyrion?  

[Orphalesion]

He does it with high frequency.

There's at least two Jeynes I can think of without even thinking: Jeyne Poole and Jeyne Westerling.

At least three Roberts: Fatass Baratheon, Robb and Sweetrobin.

At least three Jons:Snow, Arryn and Connington.

St least three Nymerias (one from the backstory and two from the storyline): A historic conqueror and warrior queen, a sand snake and a wolf. 

Two Lyannas: Ned's sister and the Mormont girl.

Two Rickards: Ned's father and an anthropomorphic ball of honourless slime.

More Aegons than you can count, same with Walders/Walda (and not just Freys, Hodor is named Walder)

If we look into the extended material and the histories almost every name shows up multiple times. Including some in conjunction with the same Last names, there was an earlier Jaeyne Westerling who had some historical importance (can't remember what exactly though) and some unusual combination like Lord Theon Stark.

I think he repeats names as a means of world building/ in imitation of real world history. It definitely gives the world coherence.

Now the conventional wisdom for writing is that you don't give characters the same names or similar ones, however trules can be bent and broken if it serves a purposes (as it does here) and it still holds true for the principal/most important characters. There isn't two inportant Cerseis running around, for example and Robert Stark is called Robb to differentiate him from King Robert.