The Names of the Great Houses of Westeros, Explored and Explained

What’s in a name? If you’re George R.R. Martin, rather a lot. We get into the meanings behind the names of the Great Houses of Westeros.

I first discovered George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire when I was a teenager. I hadn’t read much fantasy, but I had eagerly devoured The Lord of the Rings, and came to Westeros with biases and preconceptions formed during my time in Middle-earth. When I started reading A Game of Thrones, the first book in Martin’s saga, I felt that some aspects of the story too closely resembled things from the actual European Middle Ages. It wasn’t original — wasn’t fantasy enough — for my tastes. In my opinion, fantasy was meant to be fantastical; stealing the concept of knights, for example, from actual history felt lazy to me.

The Importance of Names

The thing that irritated me the most was the names. Fascinated by Tolkien’s names and the languages he invented to contextualize them, I felt that names like “Stark” or “Greyjoy” were simply too English. It kind of broke the illusion for me, and I still have mixed feelings about it at times. Languages don’t just appear; they are formed by history. So if you throw a language into a setting that does not share the history that formed it, things can feel odd, especially if examined closely.

Of course, this was a very short-sighted view, since no work of fantasy can ever be truly independent of our reality and still have meaning for us. Foreign elements in a fantasy story are just a different way to tell us something about ourselves. In the 15 years since, I have come to appreciate Martin’s names. After all, Tolkien also considered real-world languages old and new when picking his names, and Martin’s follows suit. Today I want to look at some of the names in A Song of Ice and Fire with you. I will focus on the names of the Great Houses, and some Houses that aren’t quite as great but come close. Maybe you can learn to appreciate them as I do now…or maybe you never were as dumb as I was in the first place.