Thu
Jul 28 2011 3:14pm

Game of Thrones Season 2: Name Change?

Carice van Houten as Lady Melisandre

Filming on Game of Thrones Season 2 has begun this week in Ireland, and the producers have hired actors for upcoming pivotal roles for the show, including Lady Brienne, Lady Melisandre (the Red Priestess), Stannis Baratheon, Davos Seaworth, and Maester Cressen.

Interestingly, the producers have confirmed that they will be changing the name of Asha Greyjoy, sister to Theon (Theon’s the Winterfell ward who likes to schtup the red-headed whore, if you recall) because it sounds too similar to Osha, which is the name of the wildling Robb Stark allowed to live after the wildlings attacked them.

So—the showrunners trust that we can follow the variety of intricate plots and multitude of characters, but they think we’ll get confused because two completely different charaters residing in two completely different areas of Westeros have alike-sounding names? Interesting.

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paranormal

1. Kiersten

view all by Kiersten | Thursday July 28, 2011 02:27pm EDT

And yet we somehow managed to handle Tolkien's Sauron and Sarumon, Eomer and Eowyn, Boromir and Faramir etc mine fields in LOTR epics.

2. MFrampton

view all by MFrampton | Thursday July 28, 2011 03:02pm EDT

@Kiersten: I hadn't even thought of that! I just think this is ridiculous, given everything else we have to retain from season to season.

3. mochabean

Thursday July 28, 2011 03:49pm EDT

Kierstan, great point! And Megan, I had the exact same reaction. Plus, a littel sexpostion could clear up any confusion, I would think. Theon could just tell Osha, "you're nothing like my sister."

4. darlenemarshall

view all by darlenemarshall | Thursday July 28, 2011 09:43pm EDT

I'm in the middle of reading A Dance With Dragons, and I admit that a cheat sheet listing all the players would be helpful at times.

I'm also finding that I'm seeing the GoT actors in my mind's eye now when I'm reading about Jon Snow or Danerys. I haven't figured out if I like that, but they're in my head so I'm living with it.

5. RachelHyland

view all by RachelHyland | Friday July 29, 2011 12:55am EDT

The title of this post made me think they were changing the series title. I mean, Season 2 should be A Clash of Kings, should it not?

Osha and Asha... ow, my head, it hurts!

6. tnh

view all by tnh | Friday July 29, 2011 08:12am EDT

I'll happily cope with Asha/Osha if the show will broadcast with captions that aren't a complete flaming disgrace. On Time Warner Cable we receive caption text as a surreal fragmented hash that's missing 20% - 60% of the dialogue and is full of inappropriate symbols from the extended ASCII character set. It turns odd colors, and switches in and out of equally odd typefaces. Occasionally we get patches of dialogue that have been translated into other languages, most often Spanish.

Without text captioning, and given the variety of accents on the show, Asha/Osha will sometimes be indistinguishable. The problem is not that we can't remember who's who; it's that without some clearer marker, many of us aren't going to be able to tell which character is being talked about.

7. MFrampton

view all by MFrampton | Friday July 29, 2011 09:16am EDT

@tnh: I hadn't considered the captioning. That stinks that it's so poor!

8. bookstorecat

view all by bookstorecat | Monday August 01, 2011 12:59am EDT

Thank God they are taking such good care of us stupid, stupid TV watchers! After all, I thought that Osha was the same as OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They sound the same--so confusing!