Is the world of Ice and Fire called Planetos? George R.R. Martin weighs in

Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire take place on the continents of Westeros and Essos, and occasionally on boats traveling between the two. There are also mysterious continents called Sothoryos and Ulthos — neither has ever been explored and they probably won’t be.

But what’s the name of the planet all of these continents are on? In the absence of word from author George R.R. Martin, fans have taken to calling it “Planetos,” but that’s never been official. A fan posed the question to Martin on one of the author’s recent Not a Blog posts:

"Incidentally, are you ever going to give a name to the World of Ice and Fire? In the English-speaking world, we call our planet Earth. In the legendary period of Earth history written about by Tolkien, the inhabitants call it Arda. Fans have, in the absence of such official names, dubbed the world of Westeros and Essos and Sothoryos ‘Planetos’, but that obviously feels a bit tongue in cheek.Basically, if you were to sit down with a Maester and ask him what planet he lives on, he would have an answer, right?"

And Martin answered…kind of.

"He would probably call it Earth.Of course, it would not be that word, since he’d be speaking the Common Tongue, not English.But it would mean Earth."

That’s not really an answer…or at least, it’s not as simple as Martin saying, “The planet where the story takes place is called [Insert Name Here].”

So people in Westeros speak the Common Tongue, which isn’t the same thing as English, even though it shows up as English in the books. And if you asked a maester to name the planet he’s on, he would say the word for “Earth” in the Common Tongue, which isn’t English, but will never be presented to us in anything but English, so there’s no way for us to know what he really said.

Incidentally, the word “earth” does show up in the Song of Ice and Fire books, but always as the small “E” version: “earth,” not “Earth.” But if what Martin said above holds true, the common tongue word for “earth” is the same as the one for “Earth” — we just can’t know what it is.

In conclusion, I’m not sure if we’re any closer to divining the name of the planet than before, but we did have a fun exercise in philology. What do you guys make of it?