Arya and Khaleesi: The Game of Thrones Curve

Nov 6, 2026 Abigail Adams, Editorial writer

Most name trends take decades. A television phenomenon works faster — fast enough that you can watch it arrive, peak and recede inside a single chart, like a tide mark on a wall.

Arya: the full arc in sixteen years

In 2009, before the show existed, 179 baby girls were named Arya; she ranked #1,104. Then the curve bends:

2011: 344
2012: 719
2013: 1,118
2015: 1,629
2017: 2,159
2019: 3,043 babies, ranked #92 — the year of the show's final season

Seventeen times her pre-show count, and a top-100 name. Then the tide went out: 2,366 in 2020, a plateau around 2,300 in 2021–22, and 1,839 babies (#160) in 2025. Arya is still ten times more popular than she was in 2009 — the show permanently raised her floor — but she has given back 40% of her peak.

Khaleesi: naming a child after a title

Khaleesi is the stranger artifact. It is not a character's name; it is a word meaning "queen" in a language invented for the show, used as a title. Before 2011 it does not appear in the data at all. In 2011 it appears with exactly 5 babies — the reporting minimum.

Then: 110 in 2012, 320 in 2014, a peak of 522 babies (#554) in 2018, and 486 in the final-season year. What happened next is the surprise: Khaleesi did not vanish with the show. She recorded 407 babies in 2022 and 362 (#695) in 2025 — still a top-700 name, six years after the finale.

Two curves, two kinds of fame

Arya's curve is the classic franchise arc: steep climb, peak at the cultural moment, partial retreat to a new, higher normal. Khaleesi's is something rarer — a word that did not exist as a name before 2011, willed into the chart by a TV show and then stubbornly staying there.

The difference matters for parents. A name like Arya existed before the show and will exist after it; the association fades as the name's own population grows. A name like Khaleesi has no existence outside the show at all. Every one of the 362 girls given it in 2025 carries a reference that their parents chose at the height of a phenomenon — and that cannot dilute, because the name is the reference.

Our advice: If you love a name from a current hit, check which kind it is. A pre-existing name riding a wave (Arya was already climbing slowly, 73 babies in 2005) will usually survive the wave. A name invented by the show itself is a timestamp. Both can be the right choice — but only one of them will ever stop being a conversation about television.

See both curves year by year: Arya — and compare the other television-era names in our baby names by decade archive.