How To Make Your Own Celebrity Couple Nickname
#TalkNerdyToMeLover’s Awesome Applesauce: Charles Quevedo
A “portmanteau” or “uniname” is a blend of two words and their meaning into one new word.
In the 1950’s, Desi Arnez and Lucielle Ball, were a celebrity couple that was very powerful in Hollywood. They blended their two names together to come up with “Desilu” for the name of their production company, but nobody actually called the couple that.
It wasn’t until the early 2000’s that the media started nicknaming high-profile celebrity couples. They did this for a combination of reasons. Part of it was that it had to do with convenience and the media poking fun at the couple. Also, the blending of the names were considered cute and great for “branding” purposes of their public Hollywood romance. But the main reason, it sounded so catchy and it attracted headlines (for tabloid magazines and gossip columnists).
We live in a celebrity-crazed culture. We’re used to worshipping and naming couples. Even in high school, we called the “popular” couple (usually the football jock and cheerleader), the “It” couple. As long as there’s popular and attractive couples, it looks like the trend of name-pairing won’t be going away.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were labeled with the nickname, “Brangelina”. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes was labeled with the nickname, “TomKat”.
The media gave Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez the nickname, “Bennifer”. Ben and Jennifer broke up, but unfortunately for Ben, he hooked up with another “Jennifer”. When Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner started seeing each other, the media gave them the nicknames, “Bennifer2”, “Garfleck”, and “BenJen”.
Other celebrity couples who were given nicknames:
Britney Spears and Kevin Federline = “Spederline”
Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal = “Gyllenspoon”
Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston = “Vinnifer”
Bill Clinton and Hilary Clinton = “Billary”
Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson = “Reyhansson”
Want to create your own “celebrity couple”-type nickname with your spouse, school crush, co-worker or a celebrity that you’re smitten with? Here’s the following steps:
1) Brainstorm different names.
2) Take the first letter of one of your names and replace the first letter of the other person’s name with yours.
3) Some combinations won’t work owing to vowel placement or awkward pronunciation.
4) You can also try to mix the names together. May be more challenging than the first step, but can produce a more better sounding nickname.
5) If none of the earlier steps work, then try to mix your last names.
By the way, if @JenFriel and I (@FuglyCharlie, a.k.a. “Fugz”) were a celebrity couple, we’d probably be given the nickname, “Jugz” … Just sayin’ (LOL!).
Follow Charles on Twitter: @FuglyCharlie
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