Baratheon name origin

[KarlDanski]

Still. Baratheon is more Westerosish than Valyrian, sounding and spelling. I doubt House Baratheon ventured from Valyrian with the Targs, I'm betting that they were a Dragonstone House, maybe even the previous ruler of Dragonstone Island. Plus, since Baratheon isn't a bastard name like Waters, it must either be a noble house or a newly created house.

[Lollygag]

2 hours ago, Universal Sword Donor said:

Not sure where we are getting "traditionally" close from. Aside from Ned and Rob, who has known each other? Bran the Builder and Durran Godgriefs? There's no one post AC in the Stark family free and we know of no Starks married into the Baratheons. 

Either I can't find it or I'm not recalling correctly. Seems I remember that Renly was open to making an exception for Robb in allowing him to remain king (in name only, really) based on their traditional closeness. It stuck in my mind because as you pointed out, I didn't think that they had been close since Bran the Builder until Ned and Robert who were both dead, but the statement I think I recall stuck in my head because it seemed to indicate that there was Stark/Baratheon history which hadn't been revealed to the reader yet.

 

[Bael's Bastard]

1 hour ago, The hairy bear said:

Orys Baratheon had black hair and black eyes. Since the rumours that he was the son of Aegon's father were widespread, I think that we can assume that his mother was not from Valyrian stock.

Theon seems to be a first men name. Theon Stark fought the Andals, and the name seems to be popular in the North and the Iron Islands: the regions with less Andal influence. I'd say that the most logical assumption is that the Baratheons were minor nobility in Dragonstone and lived there from before the arrival of the Targaryens.

ETA:

There are around 80 different names in the Targaryen family tree. There is only one that do not have a "ae" or a "y", and this is Duncan  (as we know, a non Valyrian name)

It seems to me that a Baratheon doesn't look very Valyrian.

The name Baratheon could still be Valyrian or derived from Valyrian in the event that Orys's mother was not Valyrian. Orys itself seems like a variation of or at least reminiscent of the name Aerys, which was the name of Aerion's grandfather.

I used to think that Orys was legally legitimate, and that Baratheon was the name of his legal father, but the World Book and discussions including Ran around that time lead me to believe that Orys was a bastard either way, and that only the identity of his father was unconfirmed.

Theon may be a First Man name, but there is no confirmation that Theon is actually one of the elements of the name Baratheon. It could be that -eon is a suffix and the previous element is Ath or Rath or Barath, or perhaps the last element of the name is Atheon or Ratheon, or perhaps it truly is Theon. We don't know, and could break Baratheon down any number of ways.

There are a handful of people in the Targaryen tree with seemingly Valyrian names with no AE or Y in their name, such as Rhalla, Valerion, Viserra, and Valarr. We have names that are very similar to these but with AEs or Ys, such as Rhaella, Valyrian, Velaryon, Viserys, and Vaella.

Baratheon may not be written with a Y, and different people will pronounce things differently, but there isn't a world of difference between the pronunciation of the "eon" in Baratheon and the "yon" or "ion" in Velaryon, Velarion, or Balerion.

[Bael's Bastard]

1 hour ago, KarlDanski said:

It doesn't sound valyrian either since it's "valyrian" sounding part is Theon which is First Men-ish. Unless your making the argument that Bara sounds valyrian which it doesn't either, your point is moot. I'm coming to agreement with hairy that it's probably lower nobility of Dragonstone, maybe on Dragonstone to be even more specific. Castle Dragonstone on Dragonstone Island.

You are assuming that the name Baratheon is made up of the two words Bara and Theon, but we don't know that to be true.

If the name were spelled Barathyon or Barathion would you really pronounce it all that differently than you do now?

It is more a superficial difference in look than it is a substantial difference in sound.

It still sounds little different than the "ion" of Balerion or "yon" of Velaryon.

[maudisdottir]

12 hours ago, KarlDanski said:

Still. The Baratheon's adopted everything from the House Durrandon, down to the house words, sigil, and honors. Why didn't he adopt the name, even more so since he married Argella Durrandon. It would of made his hold stronger, and to take a prestigious name like Durrandon would of made his fame higher. You have cases of bastards doing this instead of founding a new house, or relatives of an extinct house adopting the name, and becoming the new Lord, why not with Orys?

He didn't need to make his hold stronger. He was already on the side of the victors, and what better way to stamp the legitimacy of the new regime than changing the ruling house name to a Valyrian one? It doesn't appear that House Baratheon suffered for having dropped the Durrandon name.

IIRC Dragonstone was a Valyrian outpost long before the Targaryens fled there. If the ruling lord was a Baratheon, then he would have been a Valyrian.

[The hairy bear]

GRRM once said:

Tolkien was a philologist, and an Oxford don, and could spend decades laboriously inventing Elvish in all its detail. I, alas, am only a hardworking SF and fantasy novel, and I don't have his gift for languages. That is to say, I have not actually created a Valyrian language. The best I could do was try to sketch in each of the chief tongues of my imaginary world in broad strokes, and give them each their characteristic sounds and spellings.

Emphasis mine. If they don't have the Valyrian looks, their name doesn't have a Valyrian spelling, they never rode dragons (despite being very close to the royal family at the begining), and they are said to be "the youngest of the Great Houses" (instead of "the blood of Old Valyria), I'd say that everything leads to the conclusion that they were not Valyrian.

4 hours ago, maudisdottir said:

IIRC Dragonstone was a Valyrian outpost long before the Targaryens fled there. If the ruling lord was a Baratheon, then he would have been a Valyrian.

But the ruling lord of Dragonstone would have been an old and prestigious Valyrian family. That isn't the case of House Baratheon, that we are told that was only raised because of Orys' deeds in battle and his friendship with Aerys. One would also expect the previous rulers of Dragonstone to be Valyrian looking too.

Additionaly, after the fall of Valyria, if the Baratheons had been the previous rulers of Dragonstone they would be the second most prestigious surviving house from the Valyrian nobility. In those circumstances, it's unlikely that Orys would have abandoned his banner. The fact that he did, suggests that his house was not particularly famed or old.

I'd say that the Velaryons were the most likely candidates for being the rulers of Dragonstone before the arrival of the Targaryens. They are clearly the most important bannermen of the Targaryens, their motto is "The Old, the True, the Brave", and their name seems a deformation of the demonym "Valyrian" (as it happens in real life with "Scotts", "Francis" or "Helena").

13 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:

Theon may be a First Man name, but there is no confirmation that Theon is actually one of the elements of the name Baratheon. It could be that -eon is a suffix and the previous element is Ath or Rath or Barath, or perhaps the last element of the name is Atheon or Ratheon, or perhaps it truly is Theon. We don't know, and could break Baratheon down any number of ways.

(...)

You are assuming that the name Baratheon is made up of the two words Bara and Theon, but we don't know that to be true.
 

There's one hint in that direction though. In AGOT, when the whore wants to "honor" Robert, he tells Ned that she's going to name her daughter "Barra". It's not much, but the speculation that the house was founded when a Theon married a Barra has at least some ground.

13 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:

If the name were spelled Barathyon or Barathion would you really pronounce it all that differently than you do now?

But it'd be hard to explain why the Baratheons had the orthography of their name changed and not the Targaryens, when they came to Westeros at the same time. All maesters consistently spell Baratheon in the Westerosi way a few generations after the Conquest.

13 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:

The name Baratheon could still be Valyrian or derived from Valyrian in the event that Orys's mother was not Valyrian. Orys itself seems like a variation of or at least reminiscent of the name Aerys, which was the name of Aerion's grandfather.

Indeed, Orys seems a Valyrian name. But this makes a lot of sense regardless of the family being Valyrian or not, since Aerion was his father.

[maudisdottir]

I don't think the Baratheons were already on Dragonstone when the Targaryens arrived, I was responding to the OP's suggestion that the first Valyrians who arrived there found a Westerosi lord named Baratheon.

I don't know where the name comes from but Orys is the first Baratheon we know of and he was Valyrian (or at least of Valyrian heritage) so until George tells us otherwise I'm going to assume it's either his bastard name, his mother's/stepfather's name or a name he took for himself.

[Bael's Bastard]

1 hour ago, The hairy bear said:

There's one hint in that direction though. In AGOT, when the whore wants to "honor" Robert, he tells Ned that she's going to name her daughter "Barra". It's not much, but the speculation that the house was founded when a Theon married a Barra has at least some ground.

But it'd be hard to explain why the Baratheons had the orthography of their name changed and not the Targaryens, when they came to Westeros at the same time. All maesters consistently spell Baratheon in the Westerosi way a few generations after the Conquest.

Indeed, Orys seems a Valyrian name. But this makes a lot of sense regardless of the family being Valyrian or not, since Aerion was his father.

@The hairy bear

Just to be clear, I am only suggesting that the name Baratheon itself comes from some form of the Valyrian language, not that there was ever a Baratheon family in Valyria, or that a Baratheon family came to Dragonstone from Valyria. At this point, I am skeptical that there was a Baratheon family before Orys, and I do not believe that Orys's mother was Valyrian.

I am also not suggesting that the name Baratheon used to be spelled Barathyon or Barathion, or that the spelling has ever changed since it was applied to Orys or whoever it was first applied to. What I am suggesting is that the ending in the name Baratheon is no more different from the endings in the words such as Targaryen, Valyrian, Daemion, and Velaryon than they are different from each other.

Even with an E instead of a Y or I, I think it is completely in line with the slight spelling and pronunciation differences in the endings of the above words that nevertheless all apparently come from some form of the Valyrian language. 

I think the houses of Karstark and Nymeros Martell demonstrate that it is not out of the realm of possibility for a first name to come to be part of the name of a house, even the first name of a woman if she were notable enough. We know what it took in Nymeria's case, but who is this Barra whose name not only became part of the name of a house, but took precedence over this Theon in the name of the house?