Game of Thrones Five-Letter Names

Game of Thrones is the largest word bank on Wordleos — 180 answers, every single one exactly five letters, drawn from characters, Great Houses, places, objects, and the concepts that hold Westeros together. Every word below is a real, currently playable answer in the live game, and every lore note is the same one the game itself shows after you solve or fail a puzzle — previously visible only in that single post-solve moment, and never collected in one place until now.

This isn’t a repeat of the standard word-list reference. Instead of one flat alphabetical grid, everything here is grouped by the bank’s hand-tagged difficulty — Common, Uncommon, and Obscure — so you can see exactly which names a casual viewer already knows, and which ones are reserved for the deepest ASOIAF readers. If you want the quick-reference version sorted by category instead, that’s the Game of Thrones word list; if you want to know which day a specific word actually appeared, see the answers archive.

Why Westeros produces so many five-letter names

Before the list itself, it’s worth noting why this bank runs as deep as it does. George R.R. Martin built distinct naming conventions for each culture in his world, and several of them happen to cluster naturally around five letters. Northern and Vale names frequently end in -ON or -YN (THEON, ARRYN, ROBIN), a pattern borrowed loosely from real medieval English naming. Valyrian-descended names — Targaryen blood especially — lean on doubled vowels and hard stops (AEGON, AEMON). Dornish names often carry a softer, Mediterranean-inflected shape (OBARA, TYENE). Ironborn names tend to be blunt and consonant-heavy (BALON, EURON). That variety is exactly why the letter-frequency analysis in Best Wordle Opening Words, Tested Across Every Franchise found R, E, and A as the three most common letters across the whole 180-word bank — those cultures’ naming patterns all lean on them from different directions.

Characters: 45 names, from kings to stewards

Character names make up the largest single slice of proper nouns in the bank, and the difficulty split here is unusually even: 7 Common, 17 Uncommon, and 21 Obscure — meaning the majority of this category rewards genuine book-and-show familiarity rather than surface-level pop culture knowledge.

Names most viewers already know

DROGO — Khal of the Dothraki and Daenerys’s first husband, whose death sparked her rise.
HODOR — Winterfell stableboy whose name shrank from “hold the door” after Bran wormed into his mind.
JAIME — Kingslayer and Lannister twin who lost his sword hand at Harrenhal.
SANSA — Eldest Stark daughter who survives King’s Landing and the Boltons to rule Winterfell.
THEON — Ward of Winterfell turned Greyjoy turncloak, later broken into “Reek” by Ramsay Bolton.
RENLY — Youngest Baratheon brother who claimed the crown before dying to Melisandre’s shadow.
AEGON — Targaryen conqueror who united Westeros astride his dragon Balerion.

Familiar to regular viewers

LORAS — The Knight of Flowers, a champion jouster and Renly Baratheon’s secret lover.
BRONN — Sellsword who wins trial by combat for Tyrion, later bought off with a lordship.
JORAH — Exiled bear-sigil lord who serves and secretly loves Daenerys for years.
VARYS — The eunuch Master of Whisperers who serves the realm through a web of “little birds.”
PETYR — Littlefinger, the low-born schemer who claws his way to Lord of the Vale.
DAVOS — The Onion Knight, smuggler-turned-Hand who serves Stannis then Jon Snow.
ROOSE — Cold-blooded Lord of the Dreadfort who orchestrates the Red Wedding.
TYWIN — Ruthless Lord of Casterly Rock, killed on the privy by his son Tyrion.
BERIC — Lightning Lord resurrected repeatedly by Thoros of Myr to lead the Brotherhood.
MEERA — Crannogwoman who guards Bran Stark on his journey beyond the Wall.
SYRIO — Braavosi “dancing master” Forel who trained Arya Stark with a wooden sword.
GILLY — Craster’s daughter-wife who flees the Wall with Sam Tarly and her baby son.
AEMON — Blind maester of Castle Black, the secret Targaryen who once refused the Iron Throne.
EURON — Greyjoy pirate-king who returns with the Silence to seize the Iron Islands.
ROBIN — “Sweetrobin” Arryn, the sickly young Lord of the Eyrie raised by Lysa Tully.
JOJEN — Crannogman with greensight whose prophetic dreams guide Bran Stark north.
JANOS — Corrupt commander of the City Watch who betrays Ned Stark for a lordship.

Deep-cut names for the hardest fans

KEVAN — Tywin Lannister’s loyal younger brother, murdered by Varys as Lord Regent.
BALON — King of the Iron Islands who dies falling from a storm-battered rope bridge at Pyke.
GENNA — Tywin Lannister’s sharp-tongued sister, wed for decades into House Frey.
OBARA — Eldest Sand Snake, a spear-wielding daughter of Oberyn Martell.
TYENE — Poison-skilled Sand Snake daughter of Oberyn, deceptively sweet-faced.
ORELL — Wildling warg who skinchanges an eagle and is killed by Jon Snow.
MANCE — King-Beyond-the-Wall who united the free folk tribes against the Others.
JEYNE — Sansa’s childhood friend forced to impersonate Arya in marriage to Ramsay Bolton.
WALDA — Called “Fat Walda,” the Frey bride Roose Bolton chose for her weight in silver.
YOREN — Night’s Watch recruiter who cuts Arya’s hair to disguise her as a boy.
DALLA — Mance Rayder’s wildling wife, who dies birthing their son at the Wall.
LOMMY — Orphan boy in Yoren’s recruit band, speared through the throat by a Lannister guard.
DONAL — One-armed Night’s Watch armorer who forged Robert’s warhammer before taking the black.
WYLLA — Starfall servant long believed by many to be Jon Snow’s true mother.
SATIN — Former Oldtown prostitute who rises to become one of Jon Snow’s stewards.
CLEON — Former butcher who seized Astapor’s throne and styled himself “the Great.”
PENNY — Dwarf performer from Joffrey’s wedding feast who later befriends Tyrion in Essos.
GRENN — Night’s Watch recruit nicknamed “Aurochs,” who dies holding the Wall against a giant.
PYPAR — Former mummer’s boy at Castle Black known for his comic voices and big ears.
EDRIC — Young Lord of Starfall who reveals he and Jon Snow share the same wet nurse.
HARYS — Knight of Cornfield used by Cersei as a puppet Hand of the King.

The 23 Great Houses that fit in five letters

House names are the category most likely to trip up a casual player, because Westeros has dozens of noble houses and only a fraction happen to land at exactly five letters. Three are genuinely famous — STARK, and the two symbol-based entries STAGS and LIONS, which represent House Baratheon’s crowned stag and House Lannister’s golden lion rather than the family names themselves.

Common: STARK (House of Winterfell whose words, “Winter Is Coming,” warn of the ancient enemy), STAGS (emblem of House Baratheon, the crowned stag that once sat the Iron Throne), and LIONS (emblem of House Lannister, the golden lion of Casterly Rock on crimson).

Uncommon: ARRYN (House whose words are “As High as Honor,” ruling the Vale from the Eyrie), TULLY (Riverlands house sigil’d with a leaping trout, words “Family, Duty, Honor”), PAYNE (Lannister-sworn house whose humble squire Podrick famously serves Tyrion and Brienne), BLACK (House Blackwood of Raventree Hall keeps the old gods and an ancient feud with the Brackens), TARTH (Stormlands island house of Evenfall Hall; Brienne the Maid of Tarth is its heir), SELMY (House of the famed knight Barristan the Bold, once Lord Commander of the Kingsguard), and FREYS (Twins-holding house whose betrayal of guest right triggered the Red Wedding).

Obscure: TARLY (House of Horn Hill wielding the Valyrian blade Heartsbane, led by stern Randyll), ROYCE (Vale house of Runestone whose lords still fight in ancient runed bronze armor), DAYNE (ancient Dornish house of Starfall, keepers of the pale greatsword Dawn), REYNE (Westerlands house wiped out by Tywin Lannister, immortalized in “The Rains of Castamere”), FOOTE (Westerlands house granted Nightsong after its knight slew Bryce Caron at Blackwater), WYLDE (Stormlands house of the Rain House, sworn to Storm’s End), DARRY (Riverlands house whose plowman sigil once guarded a keep on the kingsroad), SWYFT (Westerlands house of Cornfield whose daughter Dorna married Kevan Lannister), CRABB (Crackclaw Point house descended from the legendary headhunter Clarence Crabb), UMBER (Northern house of Last Hearth led by the fierce, fingerless Greatjon), CRANE (Reach house of Red Lake whose women are rumored able to transform into cranes), WELLS (a minor northern and Dornish house name, including the loyal knight Theodan the True), and CARON (Stormlands house of Nightsong, ruled by Bryce Caron until his death at Blackwater).

25 places across Westeros and Essos

Location answers split fairly evenly between the two continents — Westeros supplies the bulk of the familiar entries, while Essos contributes most of the category’s Obscure tier.

Common: DORNE (sun-scorched southern realm ruled by House Martell, never conquered by dragonfire), ESSOS (the vast eastern continent home to Braavos, Meereen, and the Dothraki Sea), WALLS (three-hundred-mile ice barrier built to guard Westeros against the Others), RIVER (the Trident’s waterway region ruled by House Tully from Riverrun), and TOWER (the Tower of Joy in Dorne, site of Ned Stark’s duel with Ser Arthur Dayne).

Uncommon: REACH (fertile southern region of Westeros ruled by House Tyrell from Highgarden), SLAVE (Bay of cities Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen that Daenerys conquers and frees), ARROW (what Olly used to shoot Ygritte through the chest during the Battle of Castle Black), WHITE (White Harbor, the North’s largest port city, ruled by House Manderly from the New Castle), TWINS (Frey stronghold on the Green Fork where the Red Wedding massacre took place), EYRIE (nearly impregnable Vale castle atop the Giant’s Lance, seat of House Arryn), VAULT (Casterly Rock’s legendary treasury, source of the Lannisters’ vast gold wealth), MARSH (the Neck’s boggy terrain protecting Moat Cailin, home to the crannogmen), GATES (Black Gate beneath the Wall, or the fabled Jade Gates linking Qarth to the east), CRYPT (Winterfell’s underground burial halls holding statues of the dead Kings of Winter), KEEPS (fortified strongholds like the Red Keep, seat of the Iron Throne in King’s Landing), and SHORE (Iron Islands coastline where the ironborn “pay the iron price” through reaving).

Obscure: QARTH (wealthy Essos trading city at the Jade Gates, ruled by merchant princes called the Thirteen), QOHOR (easternmost Free City of Essos, called the City of Sorcerers, home of the Black Goat), HARPY (ancient Ghiscari emblem topping Meereen’s Great Pyramid before Daenerys tore it down), ACORN (Riverlands seat of House Smallwood where the Brotherhood Without Banners hosts Arya), MOATS (ruined causeway fortress Moat Cailin, gateway between the North and the riverlands), DRIFT (island seat of House Velaryon in the crownlands, home to the Driftwood Throne), GORGE (the ravine flanking the Wall’s western end, spanned by the Bridge of Skulls), and CANAL (Braavos’s Canal of Heroes and Long Canal, threading the lagoon city’s bridges).

29 objects and relics

This category has no Obscure-tier entries at all — nine Common and twenty Uncommon — because objects in Game of Thrones tend to be tied to a single, memorable moment rather than requiring deep genealogical knowledge to place.

Common: CROWN (Viserys demanded a golden one — Khal Drogo delivered it molten, poured over his head), STEEL (Valyrian steel, a rare magical metal that can kill White Walkers and hold an edge forever), SWORD (Ice, the Stark greatsword Ned Stark used for executions before it was melted down), BLADE (Needle, Arya Stark’s thin Braavosi practice sword gifted by Jon Snow), SPEAR (Oberyn Martell’s poisoned weapon of choice in his trial by combat against Gregor Clegane), COINS (the iron coin Jaqen H’ghar gave Arya — “valar morghulis” buys her passage to Braavos), ARMOR (House Royce’s ancient runed bronze plate, said to ward its wearer from harm), FEAST (the Red Wedding banquet at the Twins, where Robb and Catelyn Stark were murdered), and CLOAK (the white one marks the Kingsguard — Jaime Lannister wore his through years of infamy).

Uncommon: CHAIN (a maester’s neck chain of many metals, forged link by link for each field mastered), GLASS (dragonglass, obsidian that kills White Walkers, mined heavily on Dragonstone), TORCH (fire wielded against wights, since flame is one of the few things that stops them), STAFF (weapon a blinded Arya learns to fight with against the Waif’s stick beatings in Braavos), BADGE (the Hand of the King wears one — the hand-shaped pin Ned Stark bore so reluctantly), DIRKS (short stabbing daggers, the kind used in the Night’s Watch mutiny against Jeor Mormont), SHARD (a fragment of dragonglass or Valyrian steel, prized as a weapon against the dead), SIGIL (a house’s heraldic emblem, like the direwolf of Stark or the lion of Lannister), LANCE (jousting weapon Loras Tyrell wielded to unhorse the Mountain at the Hand’s tourney), VENOM (the Red Viper’s poisoned spear tip, which slowly killed Gregor Clegane after their duel), WHEEL (Daenerys’s metaphor for the cycle of noble houses fighting for the Iron Throne), HORNS (the signal blasts of the Night’s Watch, with three meaning the White Walkers have come), TRAPS (Ramsay Bolton’s specialty, baiting Jon Snow with Rickon at the Battle of the Bastards), WHIPS (tools of slave masters in Astapor and Yunkai that Daenerys sought to abolish), BOLTS (crossbow ammunition, the weapon Tyrion used to kill his father Tywin), ROPES (bridge rigging at Pyke that snapped in a storm, killing Balon Greyjoy), RINGS (Daenerys dropped one as a trail marker for Jorah and Daario when the Dothraki seized her), REINS (a rider’s horse controls, as when Daenerys learns to ride among the Dothraki), SCALE (greyscale, the stone-skin plague that scarred Shireen Baratheon and infected Jorah Mormont), and QUILL (a maester’s writing tool, used to pen ravens’ messages across the Seven Kingdoms).

58 concepts, titles, and Westerosi turns of phrase

Concepts is the largest category by far, and the difficulty split shows why: 29 Common, 27 Uncommon, and just 2 Obscure (USURP and TRYST). Most of these words are ordinary English nouns and titles that happen to carry a specific, memorable Game of Thrones meaning — which is exactly why they skew easier than character and house names, even though there are more of them.

Common: GHOST (Jon Snow’s pale albino direwolf, the runt of Winterfell’s litter), NORTH (Stark-ruled kingdom that later declares independence under Sansa Stark as queen), QUEEN (title claimed by Cersei, Daenerys, and Margaery amid the war for the Iron Throne), RAVEN (bird maesters use to carry messages across Westeros, also linked to the three-eyed seer), REALM (the Seven Kingdoms as a whole, united under the Iron Throne since Aegon’s Conquest), REIGN (a monarch’s rule, as in Robert Baratheon’s seventeen years atop the Iron Throne), NIGHT (the Night’s Watch, sworn to guard the Wall for a thousand years without reward), STONE (Dragonstone, the Targaryen ancestral seat and Stannis Baratheon’s stronghold), BLOOD (House Targaryen’s claim that “the dragon must have three heads” of royal blood), FIRES (wildfire, the volatile substance Aerys II hoarded to burn King’s Landing), FROST (the deep chill beyond the Wall heralding the coming of the Others), KINGS (rival claimants of the War of the Five Kings fighting for the Iron Throne), POWER (Varys and Littlefinger’s riddle-tested subject: where true power actually resides), HONOR (Ned Stark’s defining virtue, which ultimately leads to his execution in King’s Landing), GLORY (what Stannis Baratheon’s Battle of the Blackwater assault was meant to win him), MERCY (what Daenerys offers defeated slavers at first, before turning to fire and blood), SHAME (the walk Cersei Lannister endures naked through King’s Landing, rung by a bell), SEVEN (the gods of the Faith: Father, Mother, Warrior, Maiden, Smith, Crone, and Stranger), LIGHT (the Lord of Light, Melisandre’s red god who battles the darkness of the Others), WATCH (the Night’s Watch, the black-clad order that mans the Wall against the wildlings), MAGIC (force returning to the world alongside dragons, wargs, and the White Walkers), GIANT (Wun Wun, the last giant beyond the Wall who fights for Jon Snow at Hardhome), DWARF (Tyrion Lannister, the “Imp” whose sharp wit outpaces his stature at every turn), VIPER (Oberyn Martell, “the Red Viper” of Dorne, famed for his poisoned spear), FLAME (where Melisandre reads the will of her god R’hllor, the Lord of Light), HOUND (Sandor Clegane, the scarred Lannister guard who protects and mentors Arya Stark), DEATH (what the High Valyrian phrase “Valar Morghulis” declares all men must face), HOUSE (a noble family line, like Stark, Lannister, or Targaryen, defined by sigil and words), and ROYAL (blood status claimed by Targaryens, Baratheons, and later Stark rulers of the North).

Uncommon: VALAR (half of the High Valyrian phrase “Valar Morghulis,” meaning all men must die), WIGHT (a reanimated corpse raised and controlled by the Night King and the Others), FAITH (the Faith of the Seven, Westeros’s dominant religion led by the High Septon), OATHS (vows of the Night’s Watch and Kingsguard, sworn for life and rarely broken lightly), GRACE (honorific “Your Grace” used to address kings and queens across Westeros), CHAOS (Littlefinger’s creed that “chaos is a ladder” for those willing to climb it), DEBTS (“a Lannister always pays his debts” — the unofficial words, truer than “Hear Me Roar”), SWORN (Night’s Watch recruits become “sworn brothers” after reciting their vows), SIEGE (Stannis Baratheon’s failed assault on King’s Landing at the Battle of the Blackwater), EXILE (Daenerys and Viserys Targaryen’s condition across the narrow sea after Robert’s Rebellion), TRIAL (Tyrion’s trial by combat, where Oberyn Martell fought Gregor Clegane for his life), TRUCE (the Dragonpit parley’s goal, where Cersei feigned one after seeing a captured wight), VALOR (trait praised in knights like Barristan Selmy, who guarded three kings in his prime), TEETH (Biter, Rorge’s monstrous companion, filed his to points and fought like a rabid dog), CURSE (House Targaryen’s hereditary madness, which the Mad King Aerys II embodied most infamously), KNEEL (what Jon Snow refuses to do before Ramsay Bolton, and what many bend to Daenerys), STEED (Silver, Daenerys’s prized horse gifted to her at her wedding to Khal Drogo), BRAWL (the King’s Landing bread riot where a starving mob tore the High Septon limb from limb), FORGE (where Gendry hammered out dragonglass weapons at Winterfell before the Long Night), MAIDS (attendants like Shae, who serve highborn ladies such as Sansa in King’s Landing), LIEGE (a sworn overlord, as when Robb Stark is proclaimed King in the North by his bannermen), YIELD (what Stannis refused to do at Storm’s End, enduring a siege on rats and smuggled onions), WRATH (Cersei’s, unleashed when she burned the Great Sept of Baelor with a cache of wildfire), PLOTS (the Small Council chamber where Varys and Littlefinger scheme against one another), CREST (a house’s heraldic device, such as the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen), SMITH (one of the Seven gods of the Faith, patron of craftsmen and laborers), and BOUND (what guest right leaves broken at the Red Wedding, when hospitality became a trap).

Obscure: USURP (Robert Baratheon’s Targaryen-given epithet, “the Usurper,” for seizing their throne) and TRYST (Jaime and Cersei’s secret incestuous meetings, first glimpsed in a Winterfell tower).

The numbers behind the list

Across all 180 answers, 53 are tagged Common (29%), 83 Uncommon (46%), and 44 Obscure (24%) — the gentlest difficulty curve of any Wordleos bank, and part of why Game of Thrones works well as the site’s flagship world. Objects skew the easiest of the five categories (0% Obscure), while Characters and Houses carry the heaviest deep-cut weight, at 47% and 57% Obscure respectively. If a Daily puzzle ever leaves you stuck, that split is worth remembering: your odds of it being a name-based answer you genuinely don’t recognize are meaningfully higher than your odds of it being an object or common concept you already know.

For the letter-level version of this analysis — which openers actually work best against this exact 180-word bank — see Best Wordle Opening Words, Tested Across Every Franchise. For the day-by-day record of which of these 180 words has already appeared, browse the answers archive. And if you’re ready to put any of this to use, play today’s Game of Thrones Wordle directly.