Secrets of Celebrity Couple Uninames

What kind of celebrities are Brangelina, Bennifer, TomKat or Wayleen?

Have you ever heard of a uniname?

Celebrity couples or supercouples have been called by their uninames for quite some time now. A uniname or a portmanteau  word combines elements of their individual names (Uni- + Name).

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

Origin of Uninames

It all started in the beginning of this decade with the high profile romance of Hollywood celebrities Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Some ingenious media wordsmith came up with the idea of combining their names into a single uniname and lo, Bennifer was created.
Ben Affleck + Jennifer Lopez = Bennifer

There is however an older precedent to uninames. In 1950, celebrity couple Desi Arnaz (Cuban American musician, actor and TV producer) and Lucille Ball (Hollywood star and producer) created Desilu Studios. But the couple was never referred to as Desilu.

How Uninames Are Formed

The uniname serves two purposes: firstly, it is a very apt reference to a celebrity couple; secondly, it becomes a brand name for anything connected to this couple.

Brangelina = Brad Pitt + Angelina Jolie
TomKat = Tom Cruise + Katie Holmes
Wayleen = Wayne Rooney + Colleen McLoughlin
Vaughniston = Jennifer Aniston + Vince Vaughn
Spidey = Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt
Posh and Becks = David Beckham + Vicoria Adams (nicknamed Posh Spice)

Now, not all celebrity couples can be uninamized (this word doesn’t exist as a verb yet). The names must either rhyme as in Bennifer, there must be a pun involved as in TomKat, there should be assonance (Assonance is a refrain of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases) or parts of their names should blend into something that can be easily pronounced as in Wayleen.
In 2001 the uniname Posh and Becks was entered into the Collins English Dictionary. But then its usage and meaning started to change. According to the Freelang English Cockney Dictionary the term “Posh and Becks” nowadays refers to “sex” in Cockney slang.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

When Uninames Don’t Work

Sometimes uninames don’t catch on even if the couple’s relationship endures. The Clintons survived Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky and all the mudslinging but

Billary = Bill Clinton + Hillary Clinton didn’t survive beyond a few first years at the white house.
Edward VIII and Bessie Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson were never called Wallward. Uninames wasn’t the done thing in those days, even for them.
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor did not become LizanDick.
Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston did not metamorphose into Bradiston.
Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have never been referred to as Bachelle or Mirack.
Paris Hilton and Doug Rheihardt have not produced Doupa.
Zac Effron and Vaness Hudgens have not given birth to Zacess (pronounced Zackass with a “j” like sound)!

There does not seem to be any consistent pattern in why certain uninames are born and stick around. Whatever the secret behind why only some uninames succeed, linguistics experts like Fay Halberstam, of the City University of New York claim to detect socio-linguistic causes. “The sociolinguistic reason is that the people speaking are trying to make a connection with the listeners with insider information,” Halberstam said. “It you get the reference, you feel smart and informed.”

Can you guess who’s the next uniname couple?