Targaryen name meanings

[falcotron]

As I mentioned in another thread, I took a more careful look at the Targ names, and I think GRRM created them by some kind of semi-systematic transformation from pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon names (with a bit of cheating).

The rules seem to be:

• k->s
  
• r->rh (before open vowels)
  
• nC->n (the C means any consonant)
  
• V->ae (the V means any vowel, usually an open one, only sometimes)
  
• V->y (the V means any vowel, usually a close one, only sometimes)
  

And the names actually have interesting meanings this way, which seem to fit better than the meanings people have found by just looking for the most similar name in any language. Here are the Targ kings:

• Aegon <- Aegon = sword-edge
  
• Aemon <- Eamon = law protector
  
• Aenys <- ?
  
• Aerys <- Eirik = forever king
  
• Baelor <- Balor = bold (doesn't seem to fit very well...)
  
• Daeron <- Derront = dark boy (cheats by being part Welsh/Brythonic)
  
• Maekar <- Maekarn = mad eagle (cheats by being part Danish, although there could be an purely Anglo-Saxon cognate that I couldn't find)
  
• Jaehaerys <- ?rik = ? king
  
• Rhaegar <- Reygar = advise spear
  
• Viserys <- Vikerik = victorious king (cheats by being part Latin or Welsh/Brythonic, and also by possibly being the name of a Dane rather than a Saxon, but it's so wonderfully ironic for him...)
  

Daenerys is interesting, but I think I'm definitely stretching too far here. No Anglo-Saxon women have the -rik ending, and the stem was used in words but not in names and was probably borrowed, but... Danerik as a woman's name, if it existed, would mean heavenly queen, and the stem is loosely cognate with (unless it's a direct borrowing of) the Roman goddess Diana of the moon, the hunt, and childbirth.

Anyway, I'll dig into some of the non-kings later if anyone finds this interesting and people don't think I'm stretching too far.

[Julia H.]

Impressive job!

It's a bit strange that GRRM would create his Targaryen names on the basis of Anglo-Saxon names, given that Aegon the Conqueror resembles William the Conqueror in so many respects, but it's still possible.

I actually think Balor 'bold' fits too - it definitely fits with Baelor Breakspear, and Baelor the Blessed wasn't a craven either. Just remember how he freed the Dragonknight. There are different types of courage.

The Daenerys - Danerik - Diana is perhaps the most exciting find even if it is not based on a real name. An invented name may imply a specific purpose on the author's part, and Daenerys has everything to do with the moon (as the Mother of Dragons, as the "moon" of Drogo's life, as the Amethyst Empress reborn etc.).

[Criston of House Shapper]

Maybe he just made the names up at random, he just threw together some ae, rh, y, -is, -on etc.

There's no names with f, u, p, t, z and maybe a couple of other letters, Maekar is the only name to my knowledge with a k, so he might have just taken a couple of letters out of the alphabet and jumbled the rest around to make the names kinda sound similar and foreign.

[falcotron]

It's a bit strange that GRRM would create his Targaryen names on the basis of Anglo-Saxon names, given that Aegon the Conqueror resembles William the Conqueror in so many respects, but it's still possible.

Yes, that's exactly why I never noticed this before.

But the fact that Aegon is an actual Saxon name should have been a clue. There may have been some Normans with the Frankish version Egon, but still, Aegon<-Aegon is simpler than Aegon<-Egon. Not to mention that "ae" (or, rather, the single-letter æ ligature) is used all over Old English, but not in many other languages besides Old Norse.

Also, -rys just looks like a regular suffix, and I can't think of anything in Norman or any Romance languages it fits with, but it fits an obvious suffix in Germanic languages, the -ryk/-rik/-ric/-rikr/-rykr "ruler/king/realm" one in Erik and Aelfric, and the -ryce/-rice/-ric "rich" one in Osric. (Although probably a good thing I didn't think of that particular example, because there are Osrics in the book, and they're clearly Andals...)

The Daenerys - Danerik - Diana is perhaps the most exciting find even if it is not based on a real name. An invented name may imply a specific purpose on the author's part, and Daenerys has everything to do with the moon (as the Mother of Dragons, as the "moon" of Drogo's life, as the Amethyst Empress reborn etc.).

But that's part of what worries me: when you find a connection that looks that good, it makes it easier to forget that you have to cheat to find it, and more sure that you've found something that author intended when you should actually be less sure...

After all, matching Daena to Diana is almost as easy without coming up with a linguistic correspondence between them.

Maybe he just made the names up at random, he just threw together some ae, rh, y, -is, -on etc.

There's no names with f, u, p, t, z and maybe a couple of other letters, Maekar is the only name to my knowledge with a k, so he might have just taken a couple of letters out of the alphabet and jumbled the rest around to make the names kinda sound similar and foreign.

Yes, that's always possible. But none of his other Westerosi names are random, and Aegon is a real Saxon name, which is why I started looking deeper.

I'm pretty confident that if GRRM had a list of Saxon names and a vague but somewhat regular process in his head, he could generate names a lot more easily and have more fun doing than by generating random names until he found one he liked. What I'm much less confident about is whether he actually thought of that. Not many other fantasy writers do. But then not many other fantasy writers commit themselves to naming thousands and thousands of minor and historical characters, or include appendices full of additional names, or spend a year inventing more detailed family trees for a supplemental book while one of their novels is late, so...

[ShadowCat Rivers]

Interesting...

Having been more exposed to transcription of greek into english (latin) alphabet, it seemed to me that Martin may have borrowed some of these rules to give an exotic aura to Valyrian names.

I got this idea initially from the extensive use of y-ypsilon, i graeca, as well as the ae digraph that had been used in the past in the place of the greek "ai" digraph. But also there is rh, that in English it is used to represent English /r/ in words of Greek origin (or so says Wikipedia).

Also a couple of names sound like having a classical drama influence quite a lot - Aemon especially, while it is mostly written as Haemon in english texts, sounds exactly as the character of "Antigone".

But this idea is mainly based on the visual aesthetics ( ;)) of the names, it can't be used to provide any sort of meaning.

So I think I like your idea of old aglo-saxon names better, since it may inform us with relevent meanings as well.

[falcotron]

Having been more exposed to transcription of greek into english (latin) alphabet, it seemed to me that Martin may have borrowed some of these rules to give an exotic aura to Valyrian names.

There's definitely a sort of "oriental" (in the old-fashioned Greco-Anatolian sense, not east-Asian) feel to the names. I remember when I first heard GRRM pronounce the name "Targaryen" in an interview as tahr-GEYR-ee-an instead of tahr-GAHR-ee-ahn and it suddenly clicked that these names were not Persian but Armenian, and Viserys and Rhaegar Targaryen sound like they should have cousins named Sarkys Arkelyan and Avesti Barsamian.

As a side note, maybe you can do better with some of the Greyjoy names than I did on the other thread. Starting from Theon as the obvious pattern-setter, and assuming that Aeron, Balon, Dagon, etc. are similar to Theon, Dion, Cleon, etc. in our language, I tried to reconstruct something Greek for each of them. But I'm not sure how plausible my reconstructions are, especially since most of the meanings seem to work better if they come from Semitic languages: Aeron from Aaron, brother of Moses, Dagon from the Caananite god who inspired Lovecraft, etc., which makes me think I may have not hit on anything useful there.

Of course there's always the rather large possibility that we're overthinking this, and GRRM did a lot more mixing and matching: Greyjoys have both Greek and Semitic roots, Targaryens have a mix of 11th century English names of all origins that he haphazardly "orientalized" to sound kind of like names from the Byzantine Empire, etc.

[ShadowCat Rivers]

Yes, Targaryen definitely feels Armenian!

I will have a look at the Greyjoy thread, though my intuition says that mix & match is the most possible version...

Coincidentally, doing a quick reading on Zoroastrianism a while ago, I stumbled over the names Daena and Asha, a Targaryen and a Greyjoy name that are, it seems, zoroastrian principles - and with this exact spelling!

ETA - Ugh, I'm so bad in etymology! I looked at the other thread and I can't think of anything better in terms of meaning, at all... except for the bad pun for Urrigon's "Urri" reeky name.

[Sly Wren]

Daenerys is interesting, but I think I'm definitely stretching too far here. No Anglo-Saxon women have the -rik ending, and the stem was used in words but not in names and was probably borrowed, but... Danerik as a woman's name, if it existed, would mean heavenly queen, and the stem is loosely cognate with (unless it's a direct borrowing of) the Roman goddess Diana of the moon, the hunt, and childbirth.

Anyway, I'll dig into some of the non-kings later if anyone finds this interesting and people don't think I'm stretching too far.

Going on a rough memory, I believe the Dae beginning in at least a few men's names from the Anglo-saxon period was supposed to mean something like "day." So, to follow your model, Dae-n-Aerys--"Day King." Maybe.

And my memory may be way off. Feel free to mock me if it is.

[falcotron]

Going on a rough memory, I believe the Dae beginning in at least a few men's names from the Anglo-saxon period was supposed to mean something like "day." So, to follow your model, Dae-n-Aerys--"Day King." Maybe.

And my memory may be way off. Feel free to mock me if it is.

No, "dae-" seems like a possibility. But the "king" part is just the "-rys"; we'd need to find a meaning for "-ne-" that fits. There are some names with "ne-" for "new", but that's probably from Norman neu, not Anglo-Saxon niwe/nïe.

Other possibilities that don't look too promising: "Deane" may have been used in Saxon names independent of the later Greek- and Irish-derived names, in which case it probably means "valley". And "Dane" and "Dene" are definitely used in Saxon names, meaning "Danish". And possible "Denna", meaning "den" (as in a cave where a beast lives).

[falcotron]

Yes, Targaryen definitely feels Armenian!

I will have a look at the Greyjoy thread, though my intuition says that mix & match is the most possible version...

Coincidentally, doing a quick reading on Zoroastrianism a while ago, I stumbled over the names Daena and Asha, a Targaryen and a Greyjoy name that are, it seems, zoroastrian principles - and with this exact spelling!

Many of the female names from all over Westeros are Sanskrit names still in common use in India, some with Avestan cognates that are still in use in Iran. Asha means hope or righteousness, Arya noble, Sansa holy (cognate to "Saint" or "Santa")...

I'm not sure what the Sanskrit cognate of Daena is, but I know the modern Persian name Dina/Din comes from it, meaning roughly a Muslim version of the Zoroastrian idea of religious conscience.

So, that could fit with the other female names, with the -rys tacked on to "Targaryanize" it.

Also, while Zoroaster wrote about Daēnā as an abstract concept, the Vendidad describes Dēnā as the woman who guides you over the bridge to join Ahura Mazda if you fought against the false daevas in life: "Then [after passing the two dogs that guard the entrance to the bridge and the three gods who sit in justice] comes the beautiful, well-shapen, strong, and well-formed maid, with her dogs at her sides, one who can distinguish, who has many children, happy, and of high understanding." Elsewhere, the dēnā is described as the religious conscience of a man (closer to the Gathas) but which, after death, if he was good, takes the form of "a maid, of blinding divine beauty", wearing the finest garments, and accompanied everywhere by her dogs (similar to the Vendidad). And there are ancient Persian women named Dena after her. If only she were usually depicted with three divine dogs instead of two...

[ShadowCat Rivers]

Btw there was a Targaryen Daena (without the -rys), she was Daena the defiant, the mother of Blackfyres. Her personality, though, is not so fitting with the daena concept.

[Newstar]

I thought all the -erys names had a Welsh flavour to them...fittingly, since a red dragon appears on the Wales flag.

"Nerys" is a Welsh name, as are "Emrys" and "Carys." Nerys is awfully close to Naerys, at least on the page.

The "Rh" combination shows up in Welsh names as well: Rhiannon, Rhian, Rhonwen, etc.

The "ae" combination does, too: Aeron, Aeronwen, Caerwyn, Cadfael, etc.

A lot of the names plumping out the Targ family tree are pretty clearly taken from common names with a twist, but to be fair it's hard to come up with these names:

Rhaena = Raina

Helaena = Helena

Saera = Sara

Elaena = Elena

Daena = Dana

Aemma = Emma

Aelyx = Alex

Most of them can be summed up as follows:

V/Rh/D/G/M/S/B + ae + mon/gon/lla/na/lor/rion

[falcotron]

I thought all the -erys names had a Welsh flavour to them...

That's a good point.

Still, it's hard to see Aegon as anything but the Saxon name Aegon.

And some of your examples, like Emma, are definitely Norman names.

Which makes me think that I am trying too hard; GRRM just took some list of 11th-ish century English people (which would include Welsh/Brythonic, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Norse, and other names, some of which exist today, some of which have evolved, and some of which have died out), picked the ones that "felt right", fancied them up a bit (mostly just changing one open vowel to ae or one closed vowel to y), and that's all there is to it.

Thinking about it that way, it wouldn't be a huge amount of work to fill up the Targaryen family tree.

fittingly, since a red dragon appears on the Wales flag.

When the UK Flag Institute requested open submissions for new flag designs for the possible new "United Kingdom of England and Wales and Northern Ireland" during the last Scottish independence vote, a lot of people had the idea of including the Welsh dragon somewhere, but surprisingly, many of them seemed to want to recolor it.

One submitter (I think this is his flag, but I'm not sure) said that the kings of Wessex mostly used black dragons on red, yellow, or white backgrounds, and when they conquered Wales (creating the first sort-of kingdom of England and Wales), they gave it a red dragon on a black (or sometimes white or yellow) background. Then green and white came later, to represent the Celtic heritage of Wales, but the red isn't distinctly Welsh, it was imposed by their conquerors. And therefore, they should use black, the actual color of their conquerors, and put the green and white elsewhere on the flag. Weird argument, but I think it means he's a Blackfyre, right? :)

Anyway, a couple of others had green-and-white or green dragons, presumably to emphasize that Celticness, but I can't find links to them. I don't remember any other black dragons.