Languages and Peoples of Westeros and Essos

These are maps drawn for A Dance with Old Tongues, an experimental text on how to translate A Song of Ice and Fire into Late Proto-Indo-European, and which language (and population) equivalents would be needed for this (announcement):

A Dance with Old Tongues (PDF)

You can reuse and modify the text and images posted here as you see fit.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Even the highest quality maps are smaller images than the originals, and they are compressed as JPEG. If you would like bigger and/or higher quality versions, a different content (with changes, omissions and/or additions), or different file formats (e.g. SVG), please write me at [email protected]. I really like to work with maps, and if the project is interesting I will probably not mind working on it.

The original PSD file can be downloaded here (see my Cartographer’s Guild post announcing it).

Maps of languages and cultures of Westeros and Essos

1-westeros-essos-ancient
The Known World in ancient times.
3-dawn-age-languages
Ancient languages before the Dawn of Days and their expansion. Modified from Adam Whitehead (2018).
4-dawn-age-languages-equivalence
Equivalence of ancient languages of the Known World and location of ancient samples referred to in the text.
5-hammer-waters-ghiscari-wars
The Known World in ancient times, after the Hammer of the Waters.
6-coming-andals-valyrian-freehold-rhoynar
Expansion of languages related to the Andal invasion, the expansion of the Valyrian Freehold, and the flight of the Rhoynar in the ten thousand ships. Likely expansions of Ibbenese are also depicted.
7-doom-valyria-seven-kingdoms
The Known World after the Doom of Valyria.
8-westeros-essos-languages
Languages of the Known World after Aegon’s Conquest. Modified from Adam Whitehead (2018).
8-westeros-essos-languages-equivalence
Equivalence of languages of the Known World with coeval proto-languages. Solid red lines divide Graeco-Aryan from Northern Indo-European dialects (Tocharian is separated from North-West Indo-European by a dotted red line).
9-seven-kingdoms-free-cities
The Seven Kingdoms and Free Cities labelled with regional scripts. Red lines divide script variants in Westeros. Words of each ruling house appear under their respective coat of arms. Images for coats of arms modified from A Wiki of Ice and Fire.

Maps of peoples and ancestry of Westeros and Essos

NOTE: Ethnic plurality estimates followed here were published in Reddit as a post (Spoilers All) Speculative Westeros Demographic Maps.

10-westeros-five-blood-ancestry
Modern ancestry distribution. Traditional interpretation of blood ancestries (notice peak of “Andal” ancestry in the North and in Dorne): Cyan: Andals; Red: First Men; Brown: Valyrian; Pink: Wildling. For specific maps of each component and their true attribution, see below.
11-sunset-sea-ancestry
Modern Sunset Sea blood ancestry distribution.
12-mazemaker-ancestry
Modern Mazemaker blood ancestry distribution.
13-valyrian-ancestry
Modern Valyrian blood ancestry distribution.
14-first-men-ancestry
Modern First Men blood ancestry distribution. Based on published ethnic plurality estimates.
15-andal-ancestry
Modern Andal blood ancestry distribution. Based on published ethnic plurality estimates
16-rhoynar-ancestry
Modern Rhoynar blood ancestry distribution. Based on published ethnic plurality estimates
17-hairy-men-ancestry
Hairy men ancestry distribution.
18-modern-bloodlines
Estimated modern distribution of bloodlines per region. Specific regions and cities have a smaller pie chart. Peaks of specific bloodlines are labelled with the corresponding name. Based on published ethnic plurality estimates and correspondence to the real world.
2-ancient-ancestry-essos
Ancient distribution and expansion of known blood ancestries: 1 – Silver Sea ancestry expands into the north-west (mainly with ρ1β1α1 λ388) to develop the Sarnori ancestry; 2 – a movement of hairy men into west Essos must have happened after Mazemakers expanded there, but before speakers of the Ancient Tongue; 3 – Summer Sea ancestry expands into Valyria, admixing with local populations, and into the Lower Rhoyne 4 – Ancient Tongue speakers expand to the west with Ancient Rhoynish through the Lower Rhoyne, admixing with Summer Sea ancestry and creating Rhoynar ancestryand 5 – to the Narrow Sea (mainly under ρ1β1α1β μ269) with the Ancient Old Tongue, creating Flatlands ancestry; 6 – Summer Sea ancestry (originally from a group of ρ1β1β υ88 close to the Silver Sea ancestry) expands to the north with Ancient Qaathi speakers.