The pronunciation of names in the known world is variable. Unlike the academic J.R.R.

Tolkien,
who claimed to have written The Lord of the Rings series primarily for the joy of fleshing out the
invented languages of Middle Earth,['Game of Thrones' Is a Real Job". Boston Globe, 6 Apr 2014.
Accessed 2 May 2014] George R.R. Martin has stated that "I don't have [Tolkien's] gift for
languages";[So Spake Martin: Yet More Questions (July 22, 2001)] that he "came to not care
much about pronunciation" during college;[So Spake Martin: Odyssey Con 2008 (Madison, Wi)
(April 06, 2008)] and that "you can pronounce [the names of the characters] however you like."[3]
[So Spake Martin: US Signing Tour (New York City, NY) (November 15, 2005)]

Author

George R. R. Martin is an American who was born to a family of mixed Italian and Irish ancestry
and grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey. He attended college and university at Northwestern in
Evanston, Illinois, and now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but his accent has been described as
remaining a "gravelly New Jersey" one.[Salter, Jessica. "Game of Thrones: Interview with George
RR Martin". The Telegraph, 25 Mar 2013. Accessed 2 May 2014. ‘Maybe it was a reaction to the
fact that my whole life was contained within five blocks – we lived on First Street and I went to
school on Fifth Street, but I loved reading about other times and places,’ he says in his gravelly
New Jersey accent.] While Westeros has regional accents, he only includes elements of them since
"that way lies madness";[So Spake Martin: Cyvasse, Accents, Historical Mysteries, and Dornish
Nationalism (April 18, 2008) In your "mind's ear", do accents from different parts of Westeros
map to accents from real life, or are details like the Dornish drawl primarily a matter of
background color? Yes, Westeros has regional accents. I played with the idea of trying to depict
them with phonetic misspellings (and indeed I do a little of that, with some less educated
characters), but that way lies madness. I try to suggest the accents with syntax and taglines
instead.] therefore, his own pronunciations are probably "wrong".[So Spake Martin: US Signing
Tour (Albuquerque, NM) (November 29, 2005)Then he asked about name pronunciation. JAY-
mee. Deh-NAIR-is. Tar-GAIR-ee-ehn. Ser like Sir. MAY-ster. Then he said, but you can say MY-
ster if you want, that he's from New Jersey and he's probably saying it wrong anyway. He did
laugh about the audio books (read by Roy Dotrice from Beauty and the Beast), that they
questioned him on the hard ones and got them right, but then went and got all the easy ones wrong
(like Peh-TEER instad of PEE-ter.) ] He agrees with those who feel English accents work better
for fantasy works: "It is full of castles and lords and swords and knights and all the other trappings
we associate with England in this country. It seems natural. It would be hard to do with a group of
actors who had thick Southern accents".[Wheeler, Brian. "Why Are Fantasy World Accents
British?" BBC News Magazine, 30 Mar 2012. Accessed 2 May 2014Martin has said English
accents work best for fantasy, as the genre is rooted in the Middle Ages."It's full of castles and
lords and swords and knights and all the other trappings that we associate with England in this
country. It seems natural. It would be hard to do with a group of actors who had thick Southern
accents," he has commented..]

Game of Thrones

Within the television show Game of Thrones, accents generally reflect the region and class of the
characters. (A specific class-based difference noted within the show is that the lords themselves
carefully enunciate "my lord" as two words whereas commoners slur them into a monosyllabic
"m'lud".[9]) Westerosi accents generally reflect those of Britain, from Northern among the First
Men of the north and beyond the Wall to Welsh influence in the Vale to posh RP accents among
the Andal nobility and clergy of the westerlands and crownlands. Essos comprises the rest of
Eurasia and characters from its regions have spoken with Mediterranean (Braavos), Germanic
(Lorath), and loosely Arabic accents (Dothraki).[ Read, Max. "What Is Going on with the Accents
in Game of Thrones?". Gawker, 6 May 2013. Accessed 1 May 2014. Eddard Stark, the Lord of
Winterfell and Warden of the North, is played by Sheffield's own Sean Bean, sporting his native
northern English accent. Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West, is
played with a posh southern accent by the great Charles Dance. And so on.

Generally speaking this is very cool (to nerdy Anglophile prisses, I mean. Not to me. I only like
sports). It's a useful way for a dense, complicated series to quietly signal backgrounds, affiliations
and alliances; it draws on pre-existing associations to quickly develop and define character; and it
provides people on the internet with a new axis along which nitpicking can take place.

Which is why we're here! To nitpick.

Why do Ned Stark's kids all have different accents? Stark, as noted above, is played with a
distinct, and real ("real") northern accent. Robb Stark, Jon Snow and Theon Greyjoy, Ned's older
sons (sort of), are all played by non-northern English actors (Richard Madden, who plays Robb, is
from Scotland, which is too far north, I guess; you can listen to his real accent below), but they've
all, to varying degrees of success, adopted Bean's Sheffield accent.The younger Stark kids,
however, all have sort of generic southern accents. (Sometimes when Arya Stark speaks you can
pick out Maisie Williams' slight West Country accent.) This is, maybe, explained by the fact that
the girls and the younger boys have largely been raised by their mother, Catelyn Stark, who is
from the Riverlands in the south (of Westeros, not England) (well, south of the North) and, as
played by the North Irish actress Michelle Fairley, speaks with a decent though not perfect
southern English accent. But! The kids' nurse Old Nan (played by the late Welsh[!] actress
Margaret John) has a strong northern accent.

Why do all the Baratheons have different accents? King Robert Baratheon's northern accent,
courtesy of York native Mark Addy, is among the best deployments of accent-as-characterization
in the series: King Robert and Lord Eddard are boyhood friends who fought side by side in
Robert's Rebellion; their similar accents reflect their shared past, communicate their rapport, and
warn of the distance between the two men and the posh, RP southern-accented Lannisters.
See:Except that, okay, King Robert isn't from the north, the way Ned is: He's from the Stormlands
in the east. And you could maybe explain this away by pointing out that Robert and Ned both
grew up as wards of John Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale, and therefore
adopted the accent of their foster father. But that would require the people of the Vale, in the east
of Westeros, to speak with northern accents—none of which are on display when Catelyn Stark
and Tyrion Lannister drop by for a visit in Season One. (In fact, some of the knights in the Vale
speak with Welsh accents, which, Jesus.)
Stannis and Renly Baratheon, meanwhile, both speak with very actorly and slightly different
southern accents. Whatever.

Why does Thoros of Myr have a Westerosi accent? Just as the Westerosi characters in Game of
Thrones have English accents, the characters from the Free Cities and other destinations across the
Narrow Sea speak in various "European" accents. Syrio Forel of Braavos is played by Englishman
Miltos Yerolemou with a kind of... Mediterranean accent. Jaqen H'ghar, who is maybe Lorathi, has
Tom Wlaschiha's native German accent. Carice van Houten, who plays Asshai-born Melisandre,
speaks her lines with her Dutch accent. We don't know Shae's background, but since she's played
by the German-accented Sibel Kekilli we can assume she's from Lorath. (Not that we've thought
about it in any depth before, obviously.). Thoros of Myr, on the other hand, is from, yes, the Free
City of Myr, and yet as played by Paul Kaye he sounds like he's from London. (He seems to speak
High Valyrian fine! But his Common Tongue is London through and through.) This kind of works
for the whole groovy gay hippy "Brotherhood Without Banners" vibe, but it absolutely does not
work for a hypothetical accent spreadsheet some viewers may have created at some dark point in
their hypothetical lives.

And also: Jorah Mormont is from far in the north, and is played by the Scottish Iain Glen, yet has
the same ACTING! accent that (two of) the Baratheons and (two of the) Lannisters have. (Did he
change his accent when he went into exile?)

Davos Seaworth, played by Irishman Liam Cunningham, has a terrific Geordie accent that no one
else on Westeros seems to have. (Maybe it's class-based? Not that any of the other working-class
characters have it?)

Roose Bolton is a northman through and through, but uses an actorly RP accent as played by
Michael McElhatton, who's Irish. Hard to really complain about McElhatton's amazingly creepy
voice, though.

Samwell Tarly is from the Reach in the middle of Westeros, and hates the north, and, yet, in the
person of John Bradley, speaks with a northern (Mancunian, in this case) accent.

The best I can do with Aiden Gillen, the Irish actor currently using every single vowel sound in
every single word he says as Littlefinger, is to pretend that it's not the actor but the character, a
very minor rural lord with aspirations at greatness, affecting that bizarre accent to sidestep his
(Vale, and therefore "Welsh"?) background.

Peter Dinklage: I mean, I don't know. A disaster, basically, but somehow it works. Nickolaj Coster-
Waldau, who plays his brother, somehow manages a better accent despite being Danish.

Good Accent Award: Rose Leslie, who plays the redhead wildling Ygritte, is a super-posh Scot
(two castles, her family owns. Two. Her real name is "Rose Eleanor Arbuthnot-Leslie."
Arbuthnot.) who pulls off an incredibly convincing northern accent:Dorne: What are they even
going to do for this. (Australian?)

"The show has dragons, who cares if the accents don't match?": Well, first of all, I care. Second of
all, the cornerstone of science fiction and fantasy fandom is nitpicking. Third of all, the fact that
Game of Thrones doesn't take place within our collectively agreed-upon reality doesn't release it
from its responsibility to verisimilitude or the maintenance of internal consistency within its own
systems.

(We, by the way, contacted HBO, but they were unable to provide anyone from the show for
interview before the deadline for this piece. "[T]his isn't a subject which has ever come up in my
pr dealings on this series," a very accommodating network publicist emailed me. "Sounds like
you're a fan[.]" HEH.)] The more peculiar accents of the Essos characters reflect that the Common
Tongue (i.e., English) is not their native language.[11] These general differences have several
notable exceptions among the actors: Eddard Stark's children speak with southern British accents
while Samwell Tarly (from Horn Hill, south of Highgarden) speaks with John Bradley-West's
Mancunian dialect. Asshai is nowhere near Lorath but Melisandre speaks with Carice van
Houten's native Dutch accent.[10]

The show hired the linguist David J. Peterson to flesh out Essos's Dothraki language.[ Martin,
Denise. "Learn to Speak Dothraki and Valyrian from the Man who Invented Them for Game of
Thrones". Vulture, 24 Apr 2013. Accessed 1 May 2014. ] He then went on to create Valyrian from
only three phrases appearing in the books: dracarys, valar morghulis, and valar dohaeris. He runs a
blog detailing the grammar of the two languages[Peterson, David. Dothraki: A Language of Fire
and Blood. Accessed 1 May 2014.http://dothraki.com/] and provides translations of (and audio
files for) Martin's books and the actors' lines[Tharoor, Ishaan. "Tongues of Ice and Fire: Creating
the Languages in Game of Thrones". Time, 3 May 2013. Accessed 2 May 2014.] but his
pronunciations are not necessarily canonical: showrunners opted against his pronunciation of
khaleesi, actors change phrasings and vocalizations, and editors clip sentences during post-
production.[12]

Audio Books

All of the audiobooks of the series have now been read by Roy Dotrice, OBE, the British actor
who played Hallyne the Pyromancer in season 2 of the television show. Owing to scheduling
issues, A Feast for Crows was also initially read by John Lee, who speaks an Irish-tinged British
English.[https://www.audiofilemagazine.com/narrators/john-lee/Speaking of accents, Lee easily
handles England's many intonations, as well as French and "four Irish accents. I also do Eastern
European and Indian and Pakistani voices. I grew up in Birmingham with lots of South Asian and
Caribbean families, so I have those accents ringing in my head. And I'm always collecting new
ones. A good narrator is a sponge.". He says that his voice--English with an echo of the family's
Irish heritage--will hold out "for a pretty long recording day. Maybe 90 minutes at a stretch for
five to six hours." ] Martin credited the audiobooks with having consulted him on most of the
'hard' names and getting them right, but noted that they "then went and got all the easy ones
wrong".[So Spake Martin: US Signing Tour (Albuquerque, NM) (November 29, 2005)]
So Spake Martin: US Signing Tour (New York City, NY) (November 15,
2005)https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1375

November 15, 2005

US Signing Tour (New York City, NY)

The other details including the content of his talk and the Q&A have already been reported, so I
won't repeat it, except to say that I was the one to ask if he intended to issue a pronunciation
guide. I've always been a stickler for pronunciation, going back to being a lifelong Tolkien fan (the
Professor was extremely particular about this, of course), so I've always wanted to know how
Martin himself pronounces names. But I guess it's nice to know that Martin is pretty flexible
about. His exact words were "You can pronounce it however you like."

Since I got to ask my question during the Q&A, I didn't want to hog the signing time with another
question, so I just thanked him for taking the time to do this, and for writing the books and for
introducing me to Jack Vance. I could tell he was pretty tired from the tour, yet he was very
gracious to everyone. Although, I did notice this exchange between him and someone ahead of
me: He asked her how she was doing, and she said she was tired. He said "YOU'RE tired?" He left
unsaid the obvious "...how do you think I feel."

All in all, a very good experience for my first signing/meeting ever, mainly because I was
extremely lucky to be have been 'upgraded' as it were. I'm positive it sucked for 75% of the people
who were there who couldn't sit/hear/etc.

Not to be biased as a native New Jerseyan [ok, stop with the jokes, besides GRRM's from Jersey,
too], but they really should hold these things in more spacious venues - the B&N in Paramus or
Clifton would be perfect - they're huge. Plus half the crowd was probably from Jersey anyway. Or
at least they could have a NYC signing and Jersey signing. I guess the organizers just didn't expect
the crowd they got, but how could they not?? He's a best-seller and this was basically the only
signing in the NE corridor. Ah well, I can't imagine what time he left the place, there were
probably about 400-500 people there when I left. Cheers to him for putting up with it - it's gotta be
harder on him than us.

I thought the funniest part was when the Hodor POV question was asked. Although a wasted
question, it was still hilarious when he again mocked his editor by wondering what she would
think if he had 27 pages of "Hodor hodor hodor hodor..." That drew a big laugh. (For the sticklers,
btw, it's pronounced HOE-door.) Also his pronunciation of Brienne threw me, too. BREE-eh-knee,
accent on the 1st syl. Always thought it was bree-EN. Well, since he gave us license to pronounce
how we like, maybe I'll go with my original.