Why didn't they name the new dire wolves after the Game of Thrones direwolves?

Earlier this week, Colossal Biosciences announced that, using modern genetic engineering, it had brought three dire wolves into this world. Although direwolves are alive and well on Game of Thrones, where they roam the northern wilds of Westeros, in our world, the enormous wolves have been extinct for thousands of years. Colossal leaned into the Game of Thrones connection, photographing direwolf pups Romulus and Remus on the Iron Throne. They even named one of the animals after a Game of Thrones character: the youngest dire wolf of the trio is named Khaleesi, one of the titles that Daenerys Targaryen goes by.

But that had Game of Thrones fans wondering: why wouldn't the folks at Colossal just name these new dire wolves after the direwolves from the show? Near the start of the story, the Stark children find a litter of direwolf puppies in the forest, and each takes one as a pet and companion. Robb gets Grey Wind, Sansa gets Lady, Arya gets Nymeria, Bran gets Summer, Rickon gets Shaggydog, and Jon Snow gets Ghost. With their white fur, the new dire wolves even look like Ghost. Why didn't Colossal CEO Ben Lamm borrow one of those names?

It ends up that Lamm has an answer for that. "The show has multiple Wolves in it, one being obviously the most famous, Ghost," he told CBR. "But a lot of them have brown fur, and they're shaggy, and there are black ones. But Dire Wolves were white. They mostly look like Ghosts, number one. So we thought, 'Do we name the first one Ghost?' But then we didn't feel like that attached them very well together, and if you go back to Greek mythology, and Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, these are like the founders of the extinction of the de-extinction world. And so we felt like Romulus and Remus were good names."

I understand wanting to give the twin brothers a name that linked them together. But what about their younger sister Khaleesi? That's a Game of Thrones reference, but it's not the name of any of the direwolves from Game of Thrones. Lamm explained that they considered naming the young dire wolf Lady, after the animal companion for Sansa Stark, but there was a problem with that:

"In the show, unfortunately, as you know, Lady dies, and so we didn't want to name the first female Lady, because we thought it was a bad omen. So we thought if we named her Khaleesi, you know, obviously, fans of the show and the books would love them. I think the bigger the fans, the more the stars will love them. There are people who are just Hardcore Targaryen fans."

Again I say fair enough...but then why not call her Nymeria? Arya Stark's direwolf survives through to the end of the series and for all we know is doing swimmingly. Lamm doesn't address that part.

They'll probably name a dire wolf "Ghost" in the future

But hey, at the end of the day, at least he had the wherewithal to make a Game of Thrones reference, even if it's not the most obvious one. "[W]e thought it was an homage to the rest of A Song of Ice and Fire," Lamm said. "Well, we will probably have another few Dire Wolves in future litters, because we want to get to about 6 to 8 to the right population in their impact dynamics, which we think is about 6 to 8 here. And so we have the first two brothers, and we didn't want one to be named Ghost, because everyone would just talk about Ghost, and no one would talk about the other one. We were trying to be a little bit more diplomatic and fair to the animals, but you can be assured that probably one of the future ones will be named Ghost."

The three dire wolves are living on a 2,000-acre ecological enclosure in an undisclosed location. Whenever little Ghost does come along, that's probably where he'll live too.

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