The aim of the study is to determine what motivates the secondary naming units for the characters from the TV show “Game of Thrones” and how these naming units are created in the process of the show’s discussion. Scientific novelty of the study lies in considering secondary naming units for the characters from the TV show as nicknames that the authors of the analysed video clips (a translator and blogger Dmit-ry “Goblin” Puchkov and a historian Klim Zhukov) create when discussing and analysing the show. In addi-tion, secondary naming units are considered in a new aspect of their relationship with linguocultural vo-cabulary - precedent phenomena. The study examined the definitions of the notions of “naming”, “a sec-ondary naming unit” and “a nickname”, as well as classifications of nicknames. As a result of the study, it has been found that secondary naming units can be motivated by a person’s appearance, occupation or profession, their first name and surname. In the material under consideration, secondary naming units are most often created on the basis of first names or surnames with the help of phonetic transformations and Russification, as well as associations with precedent phenomena. The latter may be motivated by the similarity of the activities of the show’s characters and those of precedent phenomena characters (from films, works of art), as well as non-linguistic factors.