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Puns and Wordplay


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Mint / mint

This relates to the banking wordplay I was puzzling out, above (a July 10 post in this thread).

Peter Baelish is associated with the plant mint, which he likes to chew to freshen his breath, apparently. This is a habit dating back to his early days as a ward at Riverrun, if not earlier. When he comes to King's Landing, he becomes the Master of Coin, and is in charge of appointing the people who mint coins for the Iron Throne.

This came up in a discussion of whether Petyr might have set up the Antler Men, merchants in King's Landing who were said to be plotting to assist Stannis in taking over the city. (Varys reported their alleged treason and Tyrion signed an execution order without really checking into it. He was too busy preparing the defense against a seige.) I already had a dragon connection in mind for Petyr, we knew he had hired Penny and Groat to perform at Joffrey's wedding feast, and a link to the Antler Men would be a pretty good stag piece of his strategic efforts behind the scenes. So the links between Petyr Baelish, Master of Coin, and coin-related elements of the plot are pretty strong, if not yet explicit.

How young they all had been—she no older than Sansa, Lysa younger than Arya, and Petyr younger still, yet eager. The girls had traded him between them, serious and giggling by turns. It came back to her so vividly she could almost feel his sweaty fingers on her shoulders and taste the mint on his breath. There was always mint growing in the godswood, and Petyr had liked to chew it. He had been such a bold little boy, always in trouble. (AGoT, Catelyn XI)

 

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20 minutes ago, Blackfyre Bastard said:

Jaime / J'aime (French for "I like", "I love")

I haven't worked a connection but it was always noticeable to me.

Remember that as early as the first chapters of AGoT, Jaime utters "The things I do for love" before defenestrating Bran.

Yes! Good one. I think the "things I do" line will come back in some way. It may be the line that GRRM said he told the graphic novel guys to put back in after they abridged the text for the graphic version of the story, because it will be key to the wrap-up of the stories. But I may be wrong.

When Cersei is dictating a letter for Qyburn to send to Jaime, she repeats three times, "I love you." At that point, Jaime is not impressed.

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  • 2 weeks later...

smuggler / juggler

onion / no one

Melisandre / Manderlys

I had some thoughts about these rhyming and sound-alike words, shared in a recent thread about Ser Davos Seaworth. I had been trying to figure out the link between smuggler and juggler, and the OP and comments on that thread finally pointed out the important link between the fool, Patchface, and Ser Davos. I knew they had both come back after being drowned, but I think Patchface really is focused on the destiny of Davos in a lot of his comments.

The onion / no one link occurred to me while I was writing. (I used to tell my students: Writing is thinking!) Arya has to be trained to think that she is no one; Davos really believes he is no one, and he adopts an onion sigil to make this point clear to everyone. But the irony is that neither of these characters is a no one. Arya is a mummer no one, and Davos . . . well, we shall see.

Separate topic: A light bulb just went on in my head. Why are the names "Melisandre" and "Manderlys" near anagrams? What does the red woman have in common with the family at White Harbor? I've just listened to the audiobook scene where Davos appeals to Lord Manderly and his cousin, daughter-in-law and granddaughters. The Manderlys are very put off by Melisandre's presence in Stannis's circle and declare their devotion to the New Gods before Wyman publicly calls for Davos to be executed.

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So I don't know if this counts as a wordplay but I was looking at Serwyn of the mirror shield and I thought to myself if he is an example of a knight than why isn't he a Ser. So I saw that his name would be Ser Wyn and we have a few people with this phrase in their first name. I researched it and I found that while it is the actual name for the Norse Rune for the letter w, in Old English it means Joy so I thought to myself there is a family with joy in their last name Greyjoy would then become Greywyn....

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10 hours ago, Pain killer Jane said:

So I don't know if this counts as a wordplay but I was looking at Serwyn of the mirror shield and I thought to myself if he is an example of a knight than why isn't he a Ser. So I saw that his name would be Ser Wyn and we have a few people with this phrase in their first name. I researched it and I found that while it is the actual name for the Norse Rune for the letter w, in Old English it means Joy so I thought to myself there is a family with joy in their last name Greyjoy would then become Greywyn....

Very cool discovery! I think GRRM drops a lot of hints through the use of names, if only we could sort them out. That's the first time I've heard of a clue using a rune, though. I guess I better look for some websites that explain runes and see if we can spot some other clues.

I have been hoping that Sam would study runes at Old Town, and would come up with some clarifications of old inscriptions or prophecies. You may finish your chain before Sam does, based on this insight!

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32 minutes ago, Seams said:

Very cool discovery! I think GRRM drops a lot of hints through the use of names, if only we could sort them out. That's the first time I've heard of a clue using a rune, though. I guess I better look for some websites that explain runes and see if we can spot some other clues.

I have been hoping that Sam would study runes at Old Town, and would come up with some clarifications of old inscriptions or prophecies. You may finish your chain before Sam does, based on this insight!

:lmao:Thank you! 

I remember reading the Rune is for woden but I don't know if that is credible. 

I have another one that I posted in the Arya & Good Queen Alysanne thread

Quote

Alysane is an echo of the name Alyson which derives its name from the Alyssum flower. It is Greek for "not insane". 'a' is the 'not' and 'lys' comes from 'lyc' which is like "having rabies, madness' which that meaning is derived from the word Lykos "wolf'. The flower was said to cure madness. This is where Lys' name is derived from. For me their careful breeding of Valyrian traits is preserving the madness that we so often see in the Targaryens. Which this is interesting to me that Aria has the wolf blood that Ned described as akin to crazy. 

Now what is also interesting is that there is a flower called Lobularia Maritima which is closely related to the Alyssum flowers. The first part means small pod in Greek and the second one means coastal. It is commonly known as Sweet Alison. This is probably in relation to Sweetsister and Evolett's identification here

This is also where the name Alys, Alyane and all the characters with the Aly or Ali names. Also Alice in Wonderland (and we all know her history with the madness there).  

I am not there yet with this train of thought but I thought it was worth jumping into the rabbit hole.

 

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I don't think anyone has caught onto this but per @LmL's thread about the Ironborn and the heretic greenseers, I noticed that the Black Pearl is named Bellegere Otherys her last name is Others...and while her first name is Bellegere you can split the name and you get beautiful (belle) rules by a spear (Gere is an English rendition of Gehr which is a short form of Gerwald or Gerald). 

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Just cross-posting a couple other wordplay thoughts, based on one of the lines from Patchface:

"It is always summer under the sea. The merwives wear nennymoans in their hair and weave gowns of silver seaweed. I know. I know…"

ACoK Prologue

a possible anagram involving

merwives wear nennymoans / wyvern (I haven't worked this one out completely, if it is an anagram at all)

and

silver seaweed / wise red leaves.

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Just read your thread about portals and seams and it reminded me that whenever I see the acronym KITN I always read "knit".

I know that is a coincidence, but then again why call him the "King IN the North" when logic (and grammar, I guess) dictate that it should be the "King OF the North"?

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53 minutes ago, Blackfyre Bastard said:

Just read your thread about portals and seams and it reminded me that whenever I see the acronym KITN I always read "knit".

I know that is a coincidence, but then again why call him the "King IN the North" when logic (and grammar, I guess) dictate that it should be the "King OF the North"?

I like this! That makes more sense than my first thought when I see that acronym: kitten. Then again, there's some kind of conflict between Bran and Tommen, going back to their practice swordfight with wooden swords at Winterfell, and Tommen has three kittens . . . .

But your thought brings it back to the fabric and sewing motif, and I like that even better.

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1 minute ago, Seams said:

I like this! That makes more sense than my first thought when I see that acronym: kitten. Then again, there's some kind of conflict between Bran and Tommen, going back to their practice swordfight with wooden swords at Winterfell, and Tommen has three kittens . . . .

But your thought brings it back to the fabric and sewing motif, and I like that even better.

After I wrote my previous post, it occurred to me that the anagram of KOTN (King of the North) would be "knot."

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Just now, Blackfyre Bastard said:

After I wrote my previous post, it occurred to me that the anagram of KOTN (King of the North) would be "knot."

Yes and King of Winter is "kow," as I have mused in another post. Which would make no sense except I noticed a lot of cow references relating to Ilyrio, and the House that brought Dany to Essos was House Darry (dairy). So who knows?

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13 minutes ago, Seams said:

Yes and King of Winter is "kow," as I have mused in another post. Which would make no sense except I noticed a lot of cow references relating to Ilyrio, and the House that brought Dany to Essos was House Darry (dairy). So who knows?

Well there are a lot of references to the story the weaver girl and the cow herd which is a love story about Vega (the brightest star in the constellation Lyra) and Altair (brightest star in Aquila).  And then we have a lot of we have a lot of bulls being sacrificed (Gerald Hightower, Little Walder and Styr - should be read as steer cattle). 

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Poison / Poisson

I know we have already discussed gifts (such as Joffrey's wedding gifts) and Das Gift, which is the German word for poison. I forgot to mention, when I linked to the post about Patchface's cryptic remarks, that GRRM might also have created a pun around the English word "poison" and the French word for fish, which is "Poisson". Should we look for symbolic poisonings whenever we see a character eating fish?

2 hours ago, Pain killer Jane said:

Well there are a lot of references to the story the weaver girl and the cow herd which is a love story about Vega (the brightest star in the constellation Lyra) and Altair (brightest star in Aquila).  And then we have a lot of we have a lot of bulls being sacrificed (Gerald Hightower, Little Walder and Styr - should be read as steer cattle). 

Of course! Nice catch - all that Mithros stuff. Perfect.

1 hour ago, hiemal said:

Still only on page 3, but what a great thread! Thanks for pointing it out to me in the Nennymoans... thread, Seams.

I'm glad if you're enjoying it. A number of people have done some great brainstorming about word choices, rhymes, sound-alike names and other wordplay here and on other threads, but it made sense to me to have a central place to gather the examples. And once the puns on hair / heir and eyes / ice / Ei / Eisen became clear, I realized that GRRM might have used the wordplay as a central core or structure almost; a way to organize and connect all of the stories with some common, consistent themes. Understanding the puns helps to uncover other symbols and allusions, and to make sense of them.

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11 hours ago, Seams said:

Poison / Poisson

I know we have already discussed gifts (such as Joffrey's wedding gifts) and Das Gift, which is the German word for poison. I forgot to mention, when I linked to the post about Patchface's cryptic remarks, that GRRM might also have created a pun around the English word "poison" and the French word for fish, which is "Poisson". Should we look for symbolic poisonings whenever we see a character eating fish?

All I ever hear is Victarion's voice repeating All Euron's gifts are poison over and over again. 

But we have that Septon or Measter that commented when Rhaenyra married Laenor Velaryon and equated it to eating fish. While a joke yes we know what issues arose because of that marriage and the one after that. It would have been better for them to have married Rhaenyra to her brother Aegon (and if she didn't like him she could have told her dear uncle and he would have taken care of the problem like so many others). While politically it was a good move especially considering the Sea snake personality and the Queen Who Never Was, he underestimated the ambition of his Queen. So the fish comment and poison that spilled into the realm is very illuminating. He could have easily said he didn't like lettuce or Brussel sprouts or green apples or red grapes but he chose fish. 

So I want to switch gears.

The Freys (oh the Freys) and so we have Frey as in Freyr, the twin brother of Freya, solar fertility God, killed a giant with an antler gave away a magical sword "to the wise one that could wield it". 

Then we have Fray as in a melee. And my fave fraying at the edges or seams;) which I pointed out they sit at a crossing and remember we talked about their marriages. 

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Nissa Nissa

Ni-assa the actual name of Ness, mother of Conchobar mac Nessa by the warrior druid Cathbad and Conchobar was the uncle of Cu Chulainn (The Hound of Ulster and hero of the Cattle Raid of Cooley) through his sister and daughter of Cathbad. And this name means 'not easy, not gentle' and we know that Nissa Nissa did not go gently into the good night since her scream cracked the moon. And Ness led a band of fianna (landless warriors).

 

Edited by Pain killer Jane
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On 9/18/2016 at 9:50 AM, Pain killer Jane said:

:lmao:Thank you! 

I remember reading the Rune is for woden but I don't know if that is credible. 

I have another one that I posted in the Arya & Good Queen Alysanne thread

 

From Quote: "Alysane is an echo of the name Alyson which derives its name from the Alyssum flower. It is Greek for "not insane". 'a' is the 'not' and 'lys' comes from 'lyc' which is like "having rabies, madness' which that meaning is derived from the word Lykos "wolf'."

 

Or perhaps "not a wolf" or "anti-wolf?"  We discussed earlier of the possibility of "Sansa" and "Alayne" being a sort of anagram/portmanteau if "Alysanne."  Sansa lost Lady and is evolving (imo) into a bat/Whent and Alayne is a Titan/Titan's daughter.  Queen Alysanne was, per some theorists, anti-warg and/or anti-direwolves.  These theorists conclude that Queen Alysanne moved the NW headquarters from the Nightford to Castle Black in order to cease the migration of direwolves into The North, thereby inhibiting the Starks warging ability. 

 

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