David J. Peterson is a language creator and author. He has worked as a language creator on numerous television shows and films, including HBO’s Game of Thrones, HBO’s House of the Dragon, Syfy’s Defiance, Netflix’s The Witcher, the CW’s The 100, Netflix’s Shadow and Bone, Freeform’s Motherland: Fort Salem, Marvel’s Doctor Strange, Pixar’s Elemental, and Legendary’s Dune. In 2014 he published Living Language Dothraki, the best-selling guide to the Dothraki language from HBO’s Game of Thrones. In the fall of 2015 David published his nonfiction work The Art of Language Invention with Penguin Books.
David has a background in academic linguistics, having earned a bachelor’s degree in English and Linguistics from UC Berkeley in 2003, and a master’s degree in Linguistics from UC San Diego in 2005 (recipient of the 2016 Emerging Leader Award). He’s also been creating languages since 2000. He served as a cofounder and original board member of the Language Creation Society, and served as its president from 2011 to 2014.
David lives in Orange County with his wife and work partner Jessie.