People Are Naming Their Babies After Game Of Thrones Characters
Written by
Erin Feher
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Photo via Twitter
While 2019 might have marked the final season of Game of Thrones, it’s looking like the show’s characters will live on. Over the next couple years, we’ll likely be hearing Tyrion, Ellaria, and Khaleesi shouted across the playground. That’s because the latest baby naming stats show that more parents are naming their little heirs after GOT characters than ever before.
According to Nameberry, in 2019 Ellaria (whom GOT heads will recall as the paramour of Prince Oberyn Martell of Dorne) is up 53%, jumping nearly 7,000 spots to number 5,994 (as opposed to 12,645 in 2018). And Olenna—moniker of the old and spunky House Tyrell matriarch—is up a whopping 71%.
Daenerys (as in Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons!) is up 134 spots from last year, to 1,430. Note: this uber-popular character’s name didn’t even show up on Nameberry’s list at all until 2011, when GOT premiered, and has since climbed steadily almost every year.
The same can be said of Khaleesi (Daenerys’ Dothraki name), which debuted on Nameberry’s list in 2011 at number 4,979 and today clocks in at 488, 43 spots and 7% above its prior year rank, making it the most common GOT baby name of all.
Meanwhile, the straight-forward moniker Stark was up 9%, rising from 7,592 to 6,937. And other names getting the GOT bump are Jorah, up 36%, and of course, Tyrion, which was up 20% in 2019 (it held steady at 2,657 in 2018 versus 2,126 in 2019).
And before you roll your eyes over TV-inspired naming trends, you better check your own namesake. Case in point: our mother has always been forthcoming about both our first (Erin) and middle (Elizabeth) name being inspired by characters on the popular ’70s and ’80s television series The Waltons, and a quick check of the numbers shows we’re definitely not the only ones.
According to the list of most popular baby names for the year 1980, 7 out of the 14 main characters from The Waltons show up on the top 35 list from that year: Jason (#3), James (#5), John (#8), Elizabeth (#9), Erin (#20), Mary (#26), and Benjamin (#32). Sound familiar?
Want more baby name inspo? Check out The Hottest Baby Names of 2019, The Top Baby Names Of The Last 100 Years, and 75+ Feminist Baby Names.
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