Differences between books and TV series: character names, appearances, or ages

This article is a listing of characters who were either renamed between the books and TV series, have particularly different appearances in the TV series compared to the novels, or who have notably different ages.

Even George R.R. Martin himself considered such "cosmetic" differences to usually be insignificant: for example, while Syrio Forel is bald in the novels, the TV version didn't bother to make the live-action actor play the role bald - and Martin directly said he didn't really take issue with this. Another major example is that the book character named "Asha Greyjoy" was renamed "Yara Greyjoy" in the TV series, and while book-Asha has black hair, TV-Yara has blonde hair - yet despite these changes to name and hair color, her portrayal was still quite close to the behavior and story actions of her book counterpart.

Many of the younger cast members were aged-up in the TV version, primarily due to younger characters having sex in the medieval world of Westeros at ages as young as 16 or even 13, which would be impossible to present in the TV universe due to various laws restricting portrayal of this. Moreover, several very young children had their age increased simply so they could give a better performance - i.e. Joffrey is several years older than his book counterpart, explicitly because a more experienced actor was needed to shoulder such an important role.