While the Targaryen family is back in the series “House of the Dragon”, back to the first name of Daenerys, interpreted by Emilia Clarke in “Game of Thrones”.
This week, the famous Targaryen family make their big comeback in the House of the Dragon prequel series, set roughly 200 years before the events chronicled in Game of Thrones. For the occasion, focus on their descendant Daenerys, played by Emilia Clarke in the original series, and on the meaning of her first name.
If no official explanation has really been given about the surname Daenerys, several sites specializing in first names have tried to decipher it. Some claim that “Dain” comes from Hebrew and means “God is my judge”while “Erys” comes from Greek “Eris” and evokes the goddess of discord and destruction. Quite a program for Daenerys, especially when we know the fate of the character.
Others, more optimistic, think that “Dae” actually comes from the English word “day” (evoking day and light), while “Nerys” comes from Welsh and means “lady”. The Khaleesi would therefore literally be the “lady of light”.
HBO
But did George RR Martin, the author of the original work, really think about all this when trying to find first names for his characters? In any case, as he had declared duringa masterclass at the Toronto Festival : “Names are really, really hard. I need to know a character’s name before I can write about them.”
Far from taking the names of his characters lightly, the author even went so far as to include them in the history of his universe.
“There were several waves of invasion that hit Westeros in this story”he said. “It started with the First Men, who tend to have very simple, descriptive names like Stark or Strong or Mud. They’re named after something. Then the Andals came along, and their names are a bit more elaborate. (…), like Lannister or Aaron. And then, of course, there are the Valyrians and the Targaryens.”
HBO
Regarding the latter, Martin explains that the sound of their names was supposed to evoke the change of scenery and the mysterious distant lands from which they originated:
“They have very exotic names with all those ‘ae’ and ‘y’s, with weird spellings, like Daenerys Targaryen. I found that to be a very exotic name, evoking an exotic past that went well with her silver hair and purple eyes.”
Thus, whether Daenerys evokes a goddess of destruction or a lady of light, her name in any case allows the whole history of her people and her family to resonate.
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