According to Laura Wattenberg at Baby Name Wizard Blog, 146 American-born girls were named Khaleesi last year, and another 30 were named Kaleesi. The name, for the four or five of you who don’t watch Game of Thrones and haven’t been able to pick up the gist of it through some sort of Internet osmosis, comes from the fictional Dothraki language and means “queen.” Wattenberg explains why this is notable.
Plenty of authors dating back to Shakespeare have invented names that caught on with parents. You can even find names from imagined fantasy worlds that have been used on real-world babies. For instance, hundreds of American girls have been named Eowyn over the past decade after a Lord of the Rings character. But a name taken from a word that’s not a name, from an imagined language? I can’t think of a precedent.
I’m way past yelling about what people should or should not name their children, so I’ll leave that part of this story for all of you to discuss at your next fancy dinner party at the Governor’s mansion, but I would like to reiterate one point I made back when I told you about people naming their daughters Arya: Be careful naming your child after a Game of Thrones character. George R.R. Martin has not finished writing the books yet, and he does NOT. GIVE. A. F*CK. We’ve seen that many times already. (Ahem.) There’s literally nothing stopping him from making the whole next book about Daenerys/Khaleesi going insane and cackling maniacally as her dragons torch orphanages all over Westeros. She is the daughter of the Mad King, after all. It wouldn’t even be that much of a stretch.
Think it through a little. That’s all I’m saying.
