Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5014364-20160704021938

Branching off from the main "Jon Snow" article:

As the novels have not yet revealed if Jon is actually the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, they haven't even touched upon whether his first name is even "Jon" - Eddard apparently named him "Jon", but it is unknown if Lyanna and/or Rhaegar ever picked out a name for him while she was pregnant. Eddard named him "Jon" after his own great friend and mentor Jon Arryn, a man he loved like a second father.

Season 6
The Season 6 finale of the TV series, "The Winds of Winter", advanced past the current novels and showed a flashback to the dying Lyanna presenting Ned with her baby. The episode's direction highlighted the question of Jon's real name: Lyanna starts telling Ned "his name is..." before the camera shifts off of her face and the audio fades out. Lyanna probably wouldn't have picked the name "Jon" for him after Jon Arryn, in the books or TV series, and she did have nine months to think about what to name him. Given that Eddard did not use whatever name Lyanna picked for her son, it was very probably a Targaryen-style name - given that these aren't very common in the rest of Westeros, Eddard probably called him "Jon" to hide his identity further. This is in contrast with, for example, trying to hide the secret son of "Anakin Skywalker", yet continuing to refer to the child using his father's surname ("Luke Skywalker") and hoping no one will make the connection.

Jon's real surname
This doesn't touch upon the separate issue of whether or not Jon was Rhaegar's lawful son - which he might be if by ancient Targaryen custom had a polygamous second marriage with Lyanna (after his first wife Elia Martell). If Jon is in fact Rhaegar's lawful son his surname would be "Targaryen" and not "Stark".

Possible first names
Several commentary websites have attempted to analyze the line as given on-screen, but this is futile: her lips can't be read because the camera moves off Lyanna's face as soon as she starts speaking, and the audio completely mutes out. Even if you listen to it fifty times (as some have), you'd just be imagining what you want to hear. It's also possible that the production team intentionally had the actress mouth a different name to throw off any attempts at lip-reading.

It is possible that Lyanna wanted to name him "Rhaegar". Another possibility, given the important symbolize attached to the number seven in the mythos, is that his real name is actually "Aegon" - the same name as his older half-brother who died a matter of days or weeks before he was born, during the Sack of King's Landing. After Rhaegar died at the trident, the infant Aegon became the Mad King's heir, and may have technically been considered the heir to the throne for an hour or two until he was killed when the rebels breached the Red Keep. ad Rhaegar's eldest son lived he would have been crowned as "Aegon the Sixth", and thus the next Aegon would have been "Aegon the Seventh".

An even stronger possibility, however, is that Jon's real first name might actually be "Jaehaerys", after King Jaehaerys I Targaryen, widely regarded as the best king the Targaryen dynasty ever produced, a great peace-maker and diplomat whose reign lasted for over fifty years. It must be remembered that while the TV series has mentioned old King Jaehaerys exactly once in dialogue, Jon's real name is based on the novels, in which King Jaehaerys is mentioned much more prominently (the TV show won't just make up a different first name separate from the books). What might be a hint of this is that Eddard chose "Jon" as his cover-name, which also begins with the letter "J", and no other Targaryen monarchs had a name which begins with "J". Another point towards "Jaehaerys", from a meta-narrative standpoint, is that it rhymes with "Daenaerys" and has nearly the same vowel pattern (assonance).

Jaehaerys III?
Moreover, this ties in with a curious change to the TV series which first arose back in Season 1: when Maester Aemon lists off his relationship to Rhaegar, he skips a generation. In the TV version, Aemon says that his younger brother Aegon V was the Mad King's father, and thus Aerys II was Aemon's nephew (making Aemon great-uncle to Rhaegar and Daenerys). In the books, however, Aegon V was the Mad King's grandfather: the intervening king was in fact named "Jaehaerys II". He only ruled for three years before dying young from frail health, though he was generally considered a good king. Removing Jaehaerys II's generation results in several other complications in the timeline (i.e. Jaehaerys II's sister married into House Baratheon, which is how Robert later claimed the throne).

What was strange about this change wasn't just that it happened, but how bizarrely reluctant the TV writers were to explain why it was made (perhaps not compared to later seasons, but back in Season 1 they fielded many basic questions about adaptation choices they made). George R.R> Martin even wrote the script for the Season 1 episode, "Baelor", in which Aemon explains his Targaryen lineage - the showrunners probably had to discuss changing the name with him, and wouldn't have done so lightly at that point.

They could have simply chosen to admit that they wanted to simplify the relationship between Maester Aemon and Daenerys - from "her great-grandfather's brother" to just "her grandfather's brother" - but instead remained oddly silent. Moreover, removing a king from the official family tree results in major changes to the backstory - relative to a seemingly minor impact in the actual TV storyline, it isn't clear why they would justify such a change. Aemon explained his relationship to the Mad King (and thus Daenerys) exactly once, in Season 1, and even when he later talks about Daenerys in Season 5 he doesn't call her "my great-niece" in dialogue, etc.

Some time later, during Season 3 staff writer Bryan Cogman did a fansite Q&A, and Game of Thrones Wiki actually managed to submit a question about the omission of Jaehaerys II which he responded to:


 * Question: "Has King Jaehaerys II officially been removed from the TV-continuity? Maester Aemon in the TV series says that the Mad King was the son of his brother Aegon V, when in the books he was Aegon’s grandson."
 * Bryan Cogman: "Yes, he’s officially out of show canon. In Game of Thrones canon, Egg [Aegon V] is the Mad King’s father."

Again, even when directly presented with the question about this omission, Cogman was suspiciously terse. He did confirm that it was a conscious choice, not an accident, and he could have then simply volunteered that it was to simplify the relationship between Aemon and Daenerys - instead he gave no further information about the decision.

Back during writing on Season 1, Martin explained to the showrunners several major plot revelations to come in later seasons, including Jon Snow's true parentage. What seems possible is that anticipating this revelation, the showrunners thought it would require too much exposition to say something along the lines of "Your true name is Jaehaerys the Third, named for the greatest Targaryen king" around Season 7 or so - given that they knew they would barely mention the original Jaehaerys I, and probably not have much time to even introduce Jaehaerys II. This would result in a shorter statement along the lines of "You are named after the greatest Targaryen king, Jaehaerys, and thus you are Jaehaerys II". This also probably had the added bonus of simplifying the relationship between Aemon and Daenerys, further influencing the decision to cut Jaehaerys II.