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Is this the worst name in the series?


Tyrosh Lannister

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Since it appears in only a single sentence, I'm pretty sure I just pretended I never saw Kayakayanaya and just kept reading. If he'd used it more than once, then I would have been forced to confront the reality of it.

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22 hours ago, Aebram said:

Here's a monster from real-life Massachusetts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chaubunagungamaug

But you did ask about the "worst," not the "longest." So I think I have to vote for "Shitmouth."

Kayakayanaya feels so misplaced amongst bayasabhad and samyriana. 

Imagine Kings Landing, Old Town and Yokohama 

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3 hours ago, Tyrosh Lannister said:

Kayakayanaya feels so misplaced amongst bayasabhad and samyriana. 

Imagine Kings Landing, Old Town and Yokohama 

For Westeros, Martin definitely likes concrete adjective/noun pairs - Highgarden, Bitterbridge, White Harbor, etc. He missed his chance at introducing some kind of Essos style name, though. The Orphans of the Greenblood have a major settlement in Dorne. Did they give it a Rhoynar name? No. It's called Planky Town, the silliest place name in Westeros.

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On 1/9/2023 at 11:10 AM, Tyrosh Lannister said:

kayakayanaya? what the heck was GRRM thinking? 

Oh, I think GRRM's use of Kayakayanaya is quite deliberate, especially in its context as the name of a town that is home to fierce warrior women who live in a society that empowers the female while restricting and controlling male dominance. 

I'm familiar with the term Kayakaya. Where I come from, it refers to young girls who serve as load carriers in the traditional markets of cities. These Kayakaya girls are almost always victims of rural-urban migration. Many leave their rural homes hoping to improve their lives.  They generally come from poor backgrounds, are uneducated and have no skills useful to city life. Once in the city, they are faced with the harsh reality of unemployment, no family support and are often exploited and subject to abuse, also sexual abuse. Most take up the menial task of carrying loads to eke out a living. This is no new phenomenon. Kayakaya girls have been known by that name for as long as I can remember.  In fact, though "kayakaya" specifically refers to girls, it is also used as a derogatory term for persons of percieved low status. 

In my view, by naming that town of the Patrimony of Hrykoon Kayakayanaya, the author is hinting that the warrior women of that state have overcome a previous downtrodden, oppressed "Kayakaya" status
(Kayakaya - nay (nay as in no)). 

Here's an article on Kayakaya Girls.

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7 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

I honestly doubt GRRM is that well-versed on non-European matters.

If you look closely the series doesn't line up that well with middle ages Europe either, in my view. Not to the same extent, but there are things like the age which noble people marry (much younger than average in middle ages Europe), lack of linguistic divide in the Seven Kingdoms, lack of legal system, the way lords treat peasants, lack of influence of religion on daily life, etc. Also Westeros is too big to really work in my opinion.

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Just now, Craving Peaches said:

If you look closely the series doesn't line up that well with middle ages Europe either.

Oh absolutely. GRRM's setting is a dialed up version of the popular perception of the Middle Ages. For God's sake, he made Prima Nocta an actual thing in Westeros! (Also, to oversimplify, people in the Middle Ages had better hygiene, more religious tolerance, and treated women better than their Renaissance and Early Modern descendants did. Furthermore, childbed fever only became a major killer once women stopped giving birth at home since the doctors would often come to the delivery room straight from dissecting corpses in the morgue.)

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