The Dragon Names of House of the Dragon
Today is the third episode of House of the Dragon, so for fun I thought I’d do a post of the dragon names for all the dragons we’ve seen thus far in High Valyrian (both in the orthography and in the romanization). In the writing itself there are many ways to spell names, so the spellings you see here are just those that I decided on for this post; they’re not the only possible spellings for each dragon.
First is Arrax (Arraks) whose name is built off the glyph used in arrigon, which means “to show” or “to display”. Arrax’s (Arraks’) name doesn’t necessarily derive from this word, but it’s close enough that it can be spelled with that glyph. The last glyph is a special glyph for names that end in -x (-ks).
Next Balerion, the Black Dread. The bal- portion of the name comes from the glyph for soil balon. Next is the glyph for repetition commonly used in participles. This word isn’t necessarily a participle, but that glyph is used when there’s a -Vr extender in a name (cf. Daenerys, Jaehaerys, etc.). The last glyph is the glyph for iron āegion, which is used for the -ion ending. Both the glyphs for soil and iron imply darkness, chosen in part due to Balerion’s black scales.
Sheepstealer’s name you will have heard several times this season. The name is a direct translation, with the first glyph for bianor “sheep”, and the second two glyphs being laodio, an older word for “thief” (the more common word is laodikio). To form a compound, bianor reduces to its second stem, biādr-, which then assimilates to the following l, giving us biāllaodio.
Seasmoke’s (Embrōrbar’s) name is a standard compound. The first glyph is embar “sea” and the second ōrbar “smoke”. To combine the two, embar changes to its genitive embro, and then it merges with ōrbar. The name is literally “smoke of the sea”.
Silverwing’s (Gēliotīkun’s) name is also a direct translation of the common. Gēlio is the genitive of gēlion “silver”, and tīkun is the word for “wing”. The first two glyphs give us gēlio and the second two tīkun. It’s literally “wing of silver”.
Another Common Tongue name is Moondancer (Hūrlilio). This is less obvious in High Valyrian, as the root for moon hūra is used smashed onto the word for dancer lilio. The first glyph is the glyph of the moon; the second the glyph for dancing; and the last a glyph that gives us -io, Valyrian equivalent of -er.
The name of the great Caraxes (Karakses) derives from the Valyrian word for great kara. Following that initial glyph is the special x (ks) glyph seen in Arrax (Arraks). The last glyph is the dragon glyph which gives us the -es ending.
Meleys (Meles) is a much simpler name. The name derives from mele “red”, which uses the same glyph as the glyph for a rose. The last glyph is the dragon glyph which gives us -es.
Syrax (Sȳraks) is Rhaenyra’s yellow dragon, and its name derives from sȳz “good”. In its modified forms, the root of sȳz is sȳr-, and so when it combines with the -x (-ks) glyph it’s Sȳraks, not Sȳzaks.
The old god Vhagar (Vagar) lends its name to this dragon. As an old god, the name has many spellings, and its old pronunciation has been lost. This time I spelled it with the consonantal glyphs V, H, and G with the blood glyph giving us the -ar ending. Whatever the V and H were supposed to represent has been lost to time, but the H will stick around in the spelling as a vestige of the old god’s name.
The name Vermax (Vermaks) is a combination of the glyph used in vermagon “to warn” and the -x (-ks) terminal glyph.
Vermithor (Vermitor) is another old name which has many spellings. In this instance, I used the same glyph as with Vermax (Vermaks), added a consonantal T, and used the shadow glyph to give us the -or ending.
Finally we have the Common Tongue name Sunfyre (Vēsperzys). This is a simple compound, with the sun glyph vēzos being sandwiched onto the front of perzys “fire”, similar to the moon glyph in Moondancer (Hūrlilio). The z of vēzos assimilates to the following p of perzys, devoicing to s.
Obviously, there are more dragon names than this in A Song of Ice and Fire (and more that have been mentioned in House of the Dragon), but these are the ones we have pictures of (or skulls, at least). I have to say, GRRM doesn't disappoint when it comes to the quantity of dragons. If dragons are supposed to be a big thing in the series, there better be a lot of them, and there are, so hats off to him for that!
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