So You Named Your Kid Daenerys. How’s That Feel Now?

Daenerys Targaryen is probably the first of her call, however, she clearly isn’t the final. In the years for the reason that Game of Thrones man or woman first debuted on HBO in 2011, “Daenerys” and “Khaleesi” (the latter being the maximum well-known of Dany’s many titles) have come to be pretty famous child names in the U.S. According to the Washington Post, at least three,500 ladies were given one of these names — inclusive of not unusual misspellings — in the beyond eight years. In 2018 by myself, “Khaleesi” ranked a number of the 1,000 maximum famous female names, with 560 toddlers receiving the moniker upon start. (“Daenerys” didn’t make the top 1,000, but 171 newborns got that name in 2018.)
Up till Sunday night’s episode of GOT, it was easy to understand what mother and father see inside the character. Daenerys is a strong-willed woman, who actually rises from the ashes to accumulate a navy the likes of which her global has in no way seen. She’s dependable to the ones closest to her, wants to do proper by way of her circle of relatives’ call, and could prevent at not anything to achieve her desires. Oh, and have we now not cited the dragons? Talk about position-model fabric. But then, matters took a piece of a flip.
In the series’ penultimate episode, “The Bells,” Daenerys lives up to her father’s legacy because the so-called Mad King and makes the heel turn that many have been watching for, turning into the Mad Queen. Despite the pleas of some of her closest advisers and the screams of humans inside the streets of King’s Landing, Daenerys decimates the capital city of Westeros no matter Cersei’s give up, driving her dragon and directing it to damage the entirety in its course. While she’s raining hearth from above, her troops wreak havoc at the ground, slaughtering enemy soldiers who’ve surrendered and harmless civilians in reputedly equal measure. It’s a degree of carnage and ruthlessness that we had in no way pretty witnessed on GOT, that’s pronouncing something.
So, what does all of this mean for the parents who’ve named their daughters after Daenerys? Were they horrified to peer their children’s namesake wreck terrible? Do they assume her flip to the darkish side turned into “earned”? Are they all of a sudden feeling any regrets?
“I don’t have any regrets,” says Hector Morales Rivera, a technical specialist living in Pennsylvania, who has a 6-year-vintage daughter named Daenerys. “I still love her name, I have very fond recollections due to that call, because of how attached I had been to this series.” One of those memories is of watching GOT along with his pregnant spouse, who felt a kick while one of the characters stated Dany’s call. Of path, the display and Dany herself have gone via many changes inside the seasons considering that then, and Morales Rivera isn’t pleased about in which the Mother of Dragons has ended up. “When I saw the dragon burning harmless civilians and homes with no restraint, I became unhappy,” he writes in a Twitter DM. “This isn’t always the person I fell in love with.”
Chanel Stout, a clinical schedule in Florida and mother to a 14-month-vintage named Daenerys, also isn’t a fan of ways Dany’s story is gambling out, however, she’s now not turning her back at the Queen. “[Sunday’s episode] doesn’t exchange how I feel about Dany in any respect,” she writes in an email. “I surely assume she turned into justified. I suppose the display is rushing her individual arc, however, what are you able to do.” And if her emotions about the person haven’t changed, then her feelings approximately the name virtually haven’t, both. “I don’t have any regrets in any respect!”
Danny and Amanda Cisneros, a pair in Texas who’s elevating their personal 6-12 months-old Daenerys, don’t want to choose a fictional person via the worst factor they’ve accomplished. “Some of my pals named their youngster ‘Anakin,’” Danny says, relating to Star Wars’ Anakin Skywalker, a.Okay.A. Darth Vader. “It’s similar to that.” (He did admit that after Sunday’s episode, people at his activity had been asking him, “So, uh, are you going to head through her middle name now?”) Hopefully, Danny says, whilst their daughter is vintage sufficient to observe the show — and read all the books, if George R.R. Martin honestly finishes writing them — she’ll be capable of placed Daenerys’s tale in the proper context. “It might be a great mastering possibility as nicely, to expose how even exact deeds can go off beam with bad selections.”
Another Texan, Katherine Acosta, opted for “Khaleesi” in preference to “Daenerys,” whilst naming her and her husband’s thirteen-month-old daughter. (That decision — alongside the reality that Acosta says she found GOT whilst she becomes recovering from an earlier miscarriage — has already introduced her circle of relatives a terrific quantity of press.) Despite her preference for Khaleesi, Acosta is similar to the alternative mother and father we interviewed: unfazed by the bloodbath at King’s Landing. “I genuinely assume she did what she had to do,” Acosta says. “This isn’t Disney, this is Game of Thrones. We know there’s never going to be glad endings.”
Acosta’s husband, even though, isn’t all-in on Daenerys’s techniques. “My husband became like, ‘Wow, I wager all of the human beings that named their kids Arya is feeling better now,’” Acosta says. “I’m like, ‘How do we know? Maybe while she’s older, she’s going to be like, She becomes a badass.’ You never recognize with kids