Our resident linguist’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
Let’s talk about shipping. No, not the transportation of goods over the water, but that feeling when you want a couple fictional characters to smush their faces against each other and never let go.
The word ship itself has an interesting enough grammar, not to mention its variants like OTP and broT3, but my favourite topic in the linguistics of shipping is one that has an actual academic paper written about it: The Fandom Pairing Name: Blends and the Phonology/Orthography Interface is a paper about ship names. You know, like Johnlock and Brittana and Dramione.* It was published in the Journal of Onomastics by Cara DiGirolamo, a linguist and also a friend. (To be honest, I’m pretty sure I decided we needed to become friends about 30 seconds after she mentioned she’d written this paper—and Toasties already owe her a debt of gratitude for helping me brainstorm the Bandycoot Cabbagepatch article.)
What ling-friend Cara DiGirolamo says is that a good ship name comes down to several factors:
1. Overlap
The most important factor, the one that overrides any other, is whether the names have any overlap in sound or spelling. If so, they’ll almost inevitably blend at the point of overlap: thus Brittana blends at the “an” common to both Brittany and Santana, Grindeldore (or Dumblewald) blends at the medial “l” common to Grindelwald and Dumbledore, Olicity blends at the “li” in both Oliver and Felicity, Cartinelli at the “art” in both Peggy Carter and Angie Martinelli, Cecilos at the “l” in both Cecil and Carlos, Bechloe at the “c” in Beca and Chloe, Sherlolly at the “lo” in both Sherlock and Molly, Korrasami at the “a” in both Korra and Asami, and so on.
Sometimes the overlap is more spelling than sound (the “ab” in Ichabod isn’t pronounced like the “ab” in Abbie, and yet we have Ichabbie), and sometimes the overlap is more sound than spelling (Percy/Bianca becomes Percianca because of a common “ee” sound), whatever works for the names in question. Even a near overlap can sometimes help, such as Rumbelle (the bl- from Belle evokes the pl- in Rumplestiltskin), or Rizzles (the isl- in Isles evokes the iz-l in Rizzoli).
The only time when overlap doesn’t work is if we have two names that begin or end with exactly the same sound, because, well, no one would notice if you just swapped out the same thing in the exact same position. Thus Kurt/Karofsky becomes Kurtofsky, and Riley/Buffy becomes Ruffy or Briley (a rare case of two viable ship names). Elsanna (Elsa/Anna, also known as Frozencest) manages to remain viable despite both ending in -a because Anna also starts with a-.
What about when you don’t have any overlap at all? Don’t worry, DiGirolamo has still got us covered. This is where things get really interesting.
2. Stress Match
The first thing we need to look at is where the stressed syllable is in each name by itself. We want to make any syllables we use in the ship name keep their original stress, so that the link between the original name and the ship name is as obvious as possible.
For example, Laura Hollis/Carmilla Karnstein becomes Hollstein — their first names both end in -a and “Laura” has an idiosyncratic spelling that’s hard to pronounce if you change even a single letter, so we use their last names, both of which have initial stress. Hollstein preserves the stressed syllable from Hollis and the unstressed syllable from Karnstein, while maintaining the rhythm of both names.
John Watson/Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand, becomes Johnlock. John is monosyllabic, so it’s automatically stressed, and we can substitute it out for the whole stressed syllable of Sherlock. (This is the same reason we get Kimye from Kim/Kanye.)
Cosima/Delphine, both stressed on “i”, become Cophine — the unstressed “co” from Cosima is preserved along with the stressed “phine” from Delphine.
Here’s DiGirolamo’s diagram of what it looks like when you merge stress patterns: the more X’s, the more strongly you pronounce a particular syllable:
Similarly, Merther (Merlin/Arthur) and Emison (Emily/Alison) retain the same initial stress as each name separately, Pedrazar (Pedro/Balthazar) and Delena (Damon/Elena) merges the first name’s strong-weak into the second name’s strong-weak-strong, and Tibette (Tina/Bette) puts primary stress on Bette’s stressed “be” and secondary stress on Tina’s stressed “ti”.
3. Onset Conservation
But how do we decide which name comes first? The most important factor is which name starts with the most consonants. The consonants before the vowel at the beginning of a syllable are called the onset, and Onset Conservation is DiGirolamo’s term for the fact that whichever name has the most consonants at the beginning tends to have that part stick around.
That might sound complicated, but it’s very clear in execution: the /sn-/ in Snape has two consonants, so it trumps any name beginning with a vowel or a single consonant. Thus we get the Snape family (snamily?) of ship names, such as Snarry (with Harry), Snamione (with Hermione), Snumbledore (with Dumbledore), Snack (with Sirius Black), Snupin (with Lupin), and so on.
Onset conservation is also why we get Drarry (Draco/Harry), Dramione (Draco/Hermione), Klaroline (Klause/Caroline), Sterek (Stiles/Derek), Stydia (Stiles/Lydia), Clex (Clark Kent/Lex Luthor), Chlex (Chloe/Lex), Phrack (Phryne/Jack), Cherik (Charles/Erik), CroWen (Cristina/Owen), Bedward (Bella/Edward), Brucas (Brooke/Lucas), Brangelina (Brad/Angelina), and so on.
Sometimes onset conservation even squishes together onsets from both names, such as Spred for Spike/Fred.
4. Orthographic Transparency
The next principle that the brilliant Cara DiGirolamo has identified for us is Orthographic Transparency, because English spelling is wtf. This wouldn’t be such an issue in languages with more consistent spelling systems, but in English, so much about how one letter is pronounced is indicated by what other letters it’s next to, so when you split a word up, you can’t necessarily guarantee that its pronunciation will come along for the ride.
Often, Orthographic Transparency simply forces a choice between two viable ship names. For example, Harry/Ginny both have the same number of consonants at the beginning, so Onset Conservation can’t tell us whether to pick Hinny or Garry. But Hinny wins because we’d automatically pronounce Garry with a hard g despite the fact that Ginny has a soft g. With a different Harry, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, we face a choice between Larry and Houis for the same reason, but this time it’s Houis that’s weird to pronounce, so Larry wins. (Larry Stylinson is a rare example of a double-barrelled ship name, where both first and last names combine well with each other so fans opt to use them both together.)
But sometimes, Orthographic Transparency has more drastic effects. For example, it explains why Dean/Castiel becomes Destiel rather than Deastiel. If you keep the “dea” of Dean, the pronunciation becomes ambiguous: a reader can’t tell whether the “a” is supposed to be pronounced like the “a” in Dean or like the “a” in Castiel (Dea-stiel or De-astiel?).
5. Lexical Neighbourhood Evaluation
The last major factor is Lexical Neighbourhood Evaluation: what other words sound like the potential blend?
Sometimes, soundalikes are a good thing: Shirbert (Anne Shirley/Gilbert Blythe) is close to sherbet, Pepperony (Pepper/Tony) sounds like pepperoni, Calzona (Callie/Arizona) sounds like calzone, and Zimbits (Jack Zimmerman/Eric “Bitty” Bittle) is helped by its closeness to the Canadian delicacy timbits, especially given that one of its members is Canadian. Hannigram (Hannibal/Graham) is probably influenced by words like telegram and anagram (and perhaps by the fact that some people pronounce “Graham” as a single syllable). And a sufficiently pun-tastic lexical neighbour can even make people accept a ship name that isn’t a perfect blend, as in Harmony (Harry/Hermione) or Adoribull (Dorian/Iron Bull).
But sometimes soundalikes are misleading: a case study from DiGirolamo’s paper is the ship name for Quinn Fabray/Rachel Berry. Their original ship name was Quichel, but fans weren’t completely satisfied — it looks a lot like quiche, but it’s not supposed to be pronounced quiche-l. So one of the biggest Quinn/Rachel shipping communities decided to hold a survey for a better ship name. The results were as follows:
We can see that Faberry led the poll and subsequently became the dominant ship name for this pairing — and it’s also the only one that manages to overlap, with the “b” common to Fabray and Berry.
(Also, I really don’t know why so many of these soundalikes are food-related. That’s a question for a sociologist.)
Lexical Neighbourhood Evaluation also explains why Kurt/Blaine are Klaine and not Blurt — onset conservation alone would predict that we’d get Blurt, but that’s a real word without a particularly positive connotation, so fans opted for Klaine. Similarly, Darcy/Lizzie should be equally likely to be Larcy or Dizzie, but Larcy sounds like Larceny whereas Dizzie lets you play this Beatles song for them, Jane/Bing could be Bane or Jing, but Jing sounds more cheerful, and James/Lily could be Jily or Lames, but I mean, seriously.
And, well, you should probably be able to figure out why Pinn (Puck/Finn) and Spirk (Spock/Kirk) are the preferred orders for those names. Phallic connotations aren’t always bad, though—Beadick (Beatrice/Benedick) is an accurate reflection of this combative Much Ado pairing.
(To be clear, early ships like Kirk/Spock, Mulder/Scully, and Buffy characters pre-date the blend name trend, so you may not find any of their versions particularly euphonious. Some people trace the rise in blend names to the increasing fandom importance of tumblr, whose tagging system doesn’t support slash marks.)
The crvr restriction
There’s just a few minor loose ends to tidy up. First of all, there’s a weird restriction on English words that you’ve probably never noticed before: English doesn’t like syllables like “plil” or “kror” which contain a consonant + a sonorant + a vowel + the same sonorant. A word like “ply” or “pill” is fine, but something about two /l/s or two /r/s on either side of the vowel just doesn’t sound right to our ears.
So you won’t find English words with this pattern, and you won’t find English ship names like this either. Thus Glinda/Elphaba (Elphie) is Gelphie, not Glelphie, Carly/Freddie is Creddie, not Frarly, and Allison/Lydia is Allydia, not Lallison.
When the given names just don’t work
And occasionally, despite your best efforts, two names just won’t smoosh well. If they’re short enough, you may be able solve that by just putting them next to each other, especially if there’s a handy lexical neighbour to make it seem less weird, such as SwanQueen (Emma Swan/Evil Queen Regina Mills, with influence from Swan Lake) or Joan of March (Joan Brooke/Meg March, with influence from Joan of Arc).
But sometimes, you need to get even more creative, or you find a wordplay that you just can’t resist, like Trickyfish (Chris Kirkpatrick/Lance Bass, with a pun), Soccer Cop (Alison/Beth, related to their professions, “soccer mom” and cop), Enjolras/Grantaire (E/R, because of a pun by Victor Hugo), Star-Spangled Banner (Tony/Steve/Bruce), and so on. There’s also a subset of ships that use the -cest libfix attached to the last name of two related characters: Wincest (Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester), Holmescest (Sherlock/Mycroft), and Durincest (Fili/Kili).
(Katniss/Peeta are, I believe, known as Star Crossed, because, well… I’ll just let you think about their options for a second…)
Why this is useful for linguistics as a whole
So this is pretty cool, but how did ling-friend Cara DiGirolamo actually get a study of ship names published in a linguistics journal?
Well, ship names are part of a broader phenomenon of blends in English, from Lewis Carroll’s slithy (slimy and lithe) to why we have brunch and smog rather than leckfast and foke. But people don’t actually go around creating blends all that often — one delightful study of English blends looked at 63 of them, from the well-formed guesstimate, mansplaining, and sexpert to the baffling fozzle (fog+drizzle), brinkles (bed+wrinkles), and wonut (waffle+donut). But while 63 is quite a large corpus when it comes to real-life blends, it’s nothing when it comes to fandom: there’s more than that in ship names from the cast of Glee alone.
The fannish culture that ship names are embedded in helps too. DiGirolamo points out that another way blends get created is for advertising campaigns, where they may become popular through sheer paid-for exposure even if they aren’t that great linguistically (see phablet). The fandom process is decentralized and democratic: a ship name lives or dies on its own merits. And while ad execs and literary punsters have a lot of flexibility in terms of whether they choose to use a blend or not, show creators don’t name their characters based on which combinations will make shippable blends, so ship names are also a unique opportunity to see how people cope with words that are seriously difficult to combine.
And that, my friends, is why we need fan-guistics.
*Note that I’ll give the input names for ship names so you can follow it even if you aren’t familiar with all the sources, but I’m omitting the name of the show/movie/etc. in the interest of clutter. If any are unfamiliar to you, they will reveal themselves upon googling.
I have been waiting for this since Nicole mentioned it in a link roundup a while back and it DID NOT DISAPPOINT!
Thank you both to Gretchen and to the Toast for bringing this into my life!
ME TOO! FINALLY!
This has made me so happy on so many levels.
Please tell me I’m not the only one who always thinks Ichabbie should be Ichabibbie.
With the revival of The X-Files imminent, let us not forget that “shipping” was born (as a term) in that fandom. It’s…possible that I was included on a list of “Finishipppers” (those who wanted Mulder and Scully together but only at the end of the series) because it was important to state one’s allegiance on usenet.
It is true. I was a NoRoMo.
Loved this article! To what extent does the appeal of the ship name matter? LoVe (Logan/Veronica Mars) and Paire (Peter/Claire from Heroes) are two that strike me as having caught on through sheer cuteness.
This and the Icabbie comment above it compel me to note that I am a Sleepy Hollow NoRoMo!! Which term I never knew or used in X-Files days, but was the only thing that fits. I am fangirl insistent about it.
UST scores for every episode, yo.
I learned what “shipping” was in a special X-Files issue of Disney Adventures magazine.
Was waiting for someone to bring this up!
Ex-member of the X-Files Romantics mailing list here.
I love literally everything about this.
Also, I love that the MCU fandom has mostly abandoned the portmanteau names and gone with the old school descriptive ones that I remember from the HP fandom days. There’s a whole list here and it’s giving me SERIOUS nostalgia. I don’t even remember where half of them came from- I think that S.S. Pumpkin Pie came from a fic where Harry kissed Hermione and she tasted like pie? I need an oral history of the grand old days of HP fandom like, right now.
Ohhhhh my god, I totally forgot about the “S.S.” ship names!
RIGHT? I remember studying that list for HOURS trying to memorize the ship names because that was ~very important~ back in high school. I still remember a disturbing number of them (especially OBHWF which was most used condescendingly by Harmonians)
OBHWF is interesting, though, in that it’s not a name for a ship, but a name for a particular combination of ships, which…has that been a thing in other fandoms?
Anyway, I distinctly remember the “S.S/H.M.S.” ship names being a big thing when a lot of the HP fandom was still centered around the FictionAlley sites, and that kind of dropped off once people started migrating over to LiveJournal. By the time I drifted out of the fandom, people (at least the people in my corner of the internet) had mostly dropped cutesy ship names altogether* and had just shifted to names or initials with slashes (e.g., H/G, HG/GW, or Hermione/Ginny). I think that might have been largely for ease of tagging, though.
*with a few very entrenched exceptions
Yeah, I remember them being a big thing in the days of the dueling fan sites- they weren’t used much on the FF.net side, but any sites that popped up in support of FictionAlley would use them. I just love the creativity that went into some of them. S.S. The Government Stole My Toad is just so much more appealing than Nuna. It also amazes me how many ships people were able to come up with names for. There’s literally a ship for everyone.
The Government Stole My Toad! omg best one
You just gave me SUCH powerful flashbacks. I didn’t think I even remembered the S.S. names. But yup, “Government Stole My Toad” rings a very loud bell.
(I have a vague recollection of S.S. names being used in Slayers fandom much later, though? Like, S.S. Gourry/Phil? Of course, “very entrenched HP fans” described most of Slayers fandom on Livejournal.)
Yeah, I think the influence of the websites you’re on and how they function is a really interesting part of all this! Like, Gretchen mentioned how Tumblr’s tag search pushes fandoms toward using portmanteau names because you can’t search a string with a slash in it, but it also pushes fandoms toward uniform and unique ship names, because for the most part the only way to find anything is by searching tags and no one wants to a) have to search 17 tags for their OTP or b) sift through a million unrelated posts because the agreed-upon tag is, like, ‘kale’ and it’s in active use by three different fandoms and also people who just want to talk about leafy greens.
An agreed-upon smush name also prevents flame wars over whose name comes first in a slash pairing.
Although I will point out that, contrary to the article,Buffy fandom was using portmanteaus long before Tumblr was around. Spike/Buffy became Spuffy in the fourth or fifth season.
And let’s not forget Bangel which I always read as Bangle by accident.
“Has that been a thing in other fandoms?” Well in dragon age right now I see Team Double Date a lot. It’s for groups of Sera/f!Inquisitor and Adoribull (which got mentioned in the article, whee! That one’s so popular it’s been used on an official valentine card lol), primarily for the in-game set up (they all work really well together lol) but also fic that focuses on those four.
MCU might be an outlier because the characters have a) really boring real names b) Excellent superhero names/attributes. So why mush together Natasha & Bucky when you can say Winter Widow instead?
This is one thing I love about ship names in the Once Upon a Time fandom. With some exceptions (like Rumbelle), the names are all things like “Swan Queen,” “Captain Swan,” “Outlaw Queen,” etc.
OMG that list! So many pairings that I either didn’t know about in the first place or had forgotten about! The HP fandom back in the day was pretty amazing.
My favorite descriptive MCU ship name is “Barbershop Quartet” for Steve/Sam/Natasha/Bucky–admittedly it’s a little non-obvious but it delights me.
I am SO GLAD you brought up Pumpkin Pie as that is what I had scrolled down to be like, who else is old and remembers those days?
Started to go wallow in old school HP ships and got totally sidetracked into wondering what life would be like if we called all slash ‘virgule,’ instead!
THIS IS PERFECT AND AMAZING AND THANK YOU SO MUCH. <3 <3
COOL
This brings me back the days when a fan shipping poll mixed up a Pretty Little Liars ship name and gave all their votes to a different couple. Blood was drawn that night.
OMG, which ships did they mix up?
At the time people were trying to make Pink!Drink a thing for Hanna/Mona. The poll person got confused and attributed it to Hanna/Emily. Which I always thought was odd, since Hanna/Mona seems like a pretty popular ship while Hanna/Emily I’d never really seen.
Ok, I can see how you wouldn’t automatically know that name was supposed to be a Hanna/Mona (Hona? Manna?) thing, but Hanna/Emily just seems weird (Hemily?)
I remember being confused as to why someone would spell a decent philosopher John Locke’s name like Johnlock. And then it dawned on me.
This is one of those posts that I really enjoy but have little of substance to contribute so I just go through clicking +1 on everyone who comments!
So are you trying to say that Hannigram is NOT based off of Heartagram?
Who is with me? Who among us will stand with recovering emos who now watch Hannibal
The greatest ship to ever ship is when I was in second grade and the golden couple of the school was the 6th grade power house of Kyle French and Celina Frye.
FRENCH FRYE
That is adorable.
“Riley/Buffy becomes Ruffy or Briley (a rare case of two viable ship names).” — two viable ship names for an unviable ship! Cause Riley is the worst.
WHO WOULD SHIP THEM bad enough they were canon
Seriously. I spent a huge amount of time in Buffy fandom back in the Livejournal days, and I read those ship names just now and was like “…wait. I have never seen either of those. Probably no one has ever written a fic for that ship.”
Truth. Spuffy and Bangel are ships to go to war over. Buffy/Riley? Not even worth combining.
RILEY/BUFFY SHIPPERS ARE REAL I wish I was making this up, but they 100% exist
Oh god why??
I can only assume self-loathing.
OMG they are and it is terrible.
But I think the key which the author mentions is that back in Ye Olde Days of Buffy season 4 ship names were pretty rare. “Spuffy” was the first one I think I remember but it wasn’t until season 5 or 6. People retroactively added ship names for pre-existing ships (Bangel), but when I think of most Buffy ships I still don’t think of the “ship name” I think of the initials (B/R).
I remember “LoVe” from Veronica Mars as another early example, and I wonder how much of a role it had in starting the trend because it was so perfect.
My best friend watched Buffy for the first time last year, and was hugely disappointed when I told her that the Spike/Buffy ship name was “Spuffy” and not “Bike”.
I was thinking Spiffy, but OMG, they will always be Bike to me now.
LoVe was a very cute one, although kind of ambiguous as to the pronunciation. (Also, I cannot for the life of me remember if there were competing ship names for Veronica/Duncan or Veronica/Piz. I can’t imagine there were, because a) they wouldn’t be as good, and b) why would you even.)
People would dismissively refer to “DuVe” but if there were Duncan/Veronica shippers (I know the internet, I’m sure they existed somewhere), that was not the name they used for themselves. “WeeVer” was a little bit of a thing, though.
“DuVe”! So the fan site for Duncan/Veronica would def be “Under The Covers”, right?
Regardless of what anyone thinks of Spike or Angel, can we all at least agree that Spuffy is a way cuter ‘ship name than Bangel?
Riley is the James Hurley of Buffy.
Buffy shipping portmanteaus are weird, because Spuffy is the only really organic one. When Buffy was first airing, people referred to ships by the character’s initials, so Buffy and Angel was B/A, Buffy and Riley was B/R, and Spike and Xander (so so popular for awhile there) was S/X. I believe Spuffy rose as a name in part because it’s fun to say and in part as a PR strategy because anti-shippers would say things like “B/S is B.S.!” (Oh fandom trash talk, u so clever.) After awhile Spuffy was the default label for the ship, and because Spuffy was the dominant ship in the fandom people started trying to use the portmanteau convention for other ships, but it’s very much a late addition. And the more old school the ship was, the harder it was to impose the Spuffy naming convention on it. S/X became Spander very quickly, but hardcore Buffy/Angel shippers still say B/A–it’s mostly Spuffy shippers who call that ship Bangel.
But how does one pronounce Bangel? Is it a hard or soft G?
Soft G, like the soft G in “Angel.”
Ah, that makes sense – I was a fan of Buffy from early on, but didn’t get into fandom until a few years after it had finished airing, when I was in my mid teens – by that point, portmanteau ship names were very common, so it’s all I’m used to. (Spuffy, Bangel, Biley, Cander, Xanya, Baith …)
This is fascinating tbh.
It’s interesting seeing the ships that came before/after the rise of tumblr and how they don’t have ship names, or how the portmanteau ship names that come later can be disputed and not as accepted. For example, the Doctor Who fandom has this issue with ship names. Partially because the Doctor is usually involved in ships, but often-times ships are broken down to a specific Doctor, like Nine/Ten/Eleven/etc. A lot of people just prefer using like, Rose/Nine, Rose/Ten, because it doesn’t really lend well to ship names (Rine? Ren? Tose? Nose? LOL), and that was how it was referred to pre-tumblr. But there’s a younger subsect of fandom who is into the portmanteau naming and keep trying to make it happen, but in weird ways. Like “Bad Wholf” for Rose/Doctor, which is a combo formed from “Bad Wolf” and “Doctor Who”. I personally hate it because Rose =/= Bad Wolf and referring to The Doctor as “Doctor Who” is awkward, not to mention it doesn’t allow for breaking up WHICH Doctor you mean (and some people do not ship her with ALL of them obviously). Plus how do you even pronounce that? I refuse to use it, lol. (The same people also use Whouffle for Clara/Doctor, with the “Who” for him and “Souffle” for her because once she was referred to as Souffle Girl? IDK it’s a mess.)
ALSO how anti-shippers of a certain pairing will often use a different ship name with a funny/negative connotation as an insult, for example, Bethyl is the preferred ship-name for Beth/Daryl (TWD), but nasty anti-shippers like to refer to it as Deth. I feel like this has applied to another ship in the past but I can’t remember which one.
MerDer is what the Grey’s Anatomy people like to use, right?
Detestiel is a common one from Destiel haters. I think the worst we’ve come up with is Whinecesters for Wincest… And that’s more a joke about how much they hate our ‘ship. Their negative ship name for us is much better quality wordplay. 😉
IMPORTANT QUESTION: are “Clex” and “Chlex” pronounced the same
I guess mentally I’ve always pronounced “Chlex” with a bit of a pronounced (aspirated?) ‘h’. Not like the “ch” in “chess”, but … I dunno, maybe they are pronounced the same.
Also are they friends with Clexa (Clarke/Lexa from The 100)?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use “Star Crossed” for Katniss and Peeta. It’s Peeniss or Katpee if you’re being funny and Everlark is you’re not in my corner of the Internet.
“because English spelling is wtf” – truer words…
Loved it, thank you, Gretchen.
“Everlark” is quite a euphonious word, really. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone adopted it as a brand name, maybe for a line of health food.
Euphonious is itself euphonious <3 Just all-around one of the best words in the language imo.
I would straight-up name a child Everlark. It’s gorgeous. (I also ship them, but that’s unrelated.)
I was going to bring up Everlark! If you go by first names, the two main ships are called Penis or Kale. For last names you get the sweet-sounding Everlark or the angsty Everthorne, both of which seem appropriate for the respective relationships.
I think Everlark also works because it evokes songbirds and both birds and singing are motifs in the books.
Some people also call them Toast to be cutesy (because Girl on Fire + Boy with the Bread = toast). But yeah, shippers who write fanfic and hang out on tumblr call them Everlark in my experience.
That’s a good example of the uniqueness point I mentioned somewhere upthread! Toast is a cute shipname, but it’s not useful for things like tagging because it’s not unique enough — you might find a few Katniss/Peeta fics or artworks if you searched “toast” on Tumblr, but to get to them you’d have to scroll through a bunch of posts that are pictures of toast, toasters, champagne glasses, the text of someone’s wedding toast, maybe a few references to The-Toast, etc. (“Harmony” was popular as a shipname in its day, but it wouldn’t work well on Tumblr for the same reason.) So the Tumblr people might still use “Toast” as a cutesy name in the text of their posts, but if they want their stuff seen, they’re tagging it “Everlark,” because that tag is only going to be Katniss/Peeta fanworks.
That’s an excellent point, and it makes it even more interesting when the uniqueness argument doesn’t carry the day. Gossip Girl fandom calls Chuck/Blair Chair for always and forever, to the point that at the ship’s height shippers would go into the “chair” tag on tumblr to scold people posting actual pictures of chairs.
Haha I’m sorry that just makes laugh. It’s terrible, but so funny!
This is fascinating and awesome. This part made me LOL as someone who reads a lot of fantasy.
“So you won’t find English words with this pattern, and you won’t find English ship names like this either. Thus Glinda/Elphaba (Elphie) is Gelphie, not Glelphie, Carly/Freddie is Creddie, not Frarly, and Allison/Lydia is Allydia, not Lallison”
No wonder fantasy names sound so silly: “Glelphia the Great was fighting Frarly the demon for rule over the one true ring.”
I thought that was a cool tidbit too! I was like, oh, that’s why those words sound like something an alien would say.
Surprised that there was no mention of Wolfstar in the Swan Queen section- for Remus/Sirius. It’s a remarkably lovely creation based on multiple things- the fact that Sirius is named for the Dog Star, he IS a dog animagus, and that Remus is a werewolf. Pun made all the lovelier by JK Rowling who so named Remus Lupin because BOTH names mean “wolf.”
Also, Remus Lupin’s father’s name was Lyall, which is derived from the Old Norse word for wolf.
I have spent several years around [a rather well-known Potter fanfic author who I will not identify because I also use this name for business stuff], and my reference for Remus/Sirius is “puppyshipper.” E.g., “I read this puppyshipper fic once and I just realized you wrote it,” “Where’s the puppyshipper T-shirt?”
Awww, see, now I am just thinking of Remus and Sirius all snuggled up in a happy puppy pile.
wolf mcwolfson
I miss the HP fandom SO MUCH
I will say, I never shipped James and Sirius back in the day but their ship name remains the best I have ever heard.
STARBUCKS.
I’ve also seen this being used as a second ship name for Stucky (Steve/Bucky). Still a great name,
I’ve been reading and not commenting lately (having some sort of immune flare-up) but I couldn’t not pipe up for this article.
ZIMBITS!
Zimbitsss
Somehow I am still a puddle of mush re: that ship and ship name. It’s so good!!!
There are many newer ship portmanteaus that feel too forced to me, but I hadn’t considered how Tumblr’s shitty tags are affecting what sorts of ship names are viable. Sigh.
Well, this is an excellent explanation for why Phoenix Wright/Miles Edgeworth doesn’t have a ship name unless you count NaruMitsu (short for Naruhodou/Mitsurugi, their Japanese names).
Phoeworth
Edgenix
Edgnix
Ednix
Phoeles (Ok I like this one because you can pronounce it like “feels,” but orthographically transparent it is not.)
Milix
Edgewright
Wrightworth (Wait, this totally works, but I don’t think people use it? Why don’t they use it?)
My first thought was Nickworth, which seems clunky and inelegant, especially next to Wrightworth. I wonder why people don’t use it? After all, it has stress match and onset conservation.
Right? I wonder if it’s that NaruMitsu got an early foothold, possibly due to a more centralized English-language fandom whose early members were more likely to speak Japanese, and nothing else has really had a chance since. But I don’t know, I’m not a linguist. Or an expert on Ace Attorney fandom history.
While NaruMitsu remains the most widespread namesmush by a landslide, people also use Wrightworth a lot! 🙂
There’s a very blurry line between ship names and wedding hashtags.
Mr Daki & I were shipping our name in those nauseatingly sweet days leading up to our marriage, like, all the damn time. (We were insufferable.) I liked Robanie. He liked Melbert. That was 22 years ago (well, 21 years, 363 days ago), and we’re still insufferable. The world should be happy twitter didn’t exist back then.
Yeah, my fiance and I sometimes combine our names, but none of them are great. Taliz? Lizitha? Taliztha?
If anyone wants to chime in with a better combo of Talitha and Liz, I will totally use it to destroy the world with our cuteness (even more than we already are)
Tiz!
I like Tiz – homophone of ’tis, which is so very positive.
We got civilised pre-hashtag (2008 – so technically not pre-hashtag, I guess, but functionally pre-hashtag), but we met on LJ so we portmanteau our LJ names. Our real names come out as Melon or Hairy, so, no.
Having ‘melon’ as part of my name (Melanie) is bad enough, as I learned quite throughly when I first grew boobs. I think the LJ portmanteau is a much better option!
I love your LJ portmanteau. It’s so right.
My boyfriend and I are Roberty (Rob(ert)/Verity).
This is a very excellent point. My ex got me into those games and he could not fathom why I thought there was any sexual tension at all between Phoenix and Miles. Like… really?
My favorite is Person of Interest, with Sameen Shaw and Root. The producers actually took to Twitter to ask fans if they preferred “Raw” or “Shoot,” since both fit the characters (violence is their foreplay, and both are extremely capable with weaponry). Shoot eventually won, because it’s an awesome ship name for a pair of characters who met through torture and use punching each other as foreplay.
Whoever named that character Root had obviously never met an Australian.
on the topic of Zimbits and omgcp, please tell me someone has coined “Wholesome” for the Holster/Ransom bro-ship
ohhh, that’s so good. well done.
Well someone has NOW.
(LOVE it.)
All of these fandom linguistics articles have been my favorite, but this is actually my favorite. This is so interesting, and I learned both new ship names and new linguistics ideas.
“English spelling is wtf.” One of the many great moments of The Toast. I love this site so much.
Also, I have to do this: The Supernatural fandom has a gif for everything, don’t they? Secondary Fandom Disease, it’s a real thing.
I feel like someone could write a whole paper just on One Direction ship names alone. Even though there are only 4 members now all the ship names from when it was 5 still live on. So that’s not only each of the 5 with each other, but also combos of 3 and 4 that get blended. Aside from Larry Stylinson, as far as combining full names go, I’ve seen Ziall Horlik (Zayn Malik and Niall Horan) and Lilo Paynlinson (this one is interesting, though, because the last name works with prior conventions coming from Payne and Tomlinson, but the first part is a combo of just the first syllables of each name, Liam and Louis.) Issues also arise in the case of those two members having the same first letter, so it can be difficult to distinguish ships. Larry is for Louis and Harry, so Liam and Harry becomes Lirry. Additionally, fans of Larry get a very negative light within the fandom, so to distinguish themselves from certain sects some people have come up with Lourry as an alternate to Larry. Something I’ve also seen now that the band is down to 4 is “Nourriam” which is a blend of all 4 remaining members – N from Niall, ou from Louis, rr from Harry, and iam from Liam. Although I can’t say for certain, my guess is that Nourry was the easiest of the remaining 3 member blends to tack on the 4th to. And if you get into the 3 member blends, you have to have prior knowledge of all the traditional 2 member ships in order to work some of them out. For example, Nilo could be understood as Niall/Louis, as it follows the same blending pattern as Lilo. However, the actual name for that ship is Nouis, while Nilo signifies Niall/Liam/Louis.
Anyway I’m typing this from work right now because the printer is down and I can’t do any of the work I really need to get done without so what I’m trying to say here is I spend way too much time thinking about 1D ship names. I’ll see myself out.
KIM. MY GIRL. My favorite aspect of 1D ship names is how people who enjoy Harry/Louis in non-tin hat capacities use alternate names to differentiate from Larries (which you mentioned). Hooey/Houis/Lourry reads as a whole different ballgame than Larry on Tumblr. Love, Marv.
Now someone explain why the common ship name for Greg Lestrade/Molly Hooper is “Mollstrade” when “Golly” is right there!
IDK, but I wonder if it’s because the first association for a lot of UK people with the word ‘golly’ is the Robertson’s jam logo of a golliwog doll; which has since been recognised as offensive and withdrawn.
Because a ‘golly’ is an abbreviated term for a ‘gollywog’, a really racist term for a black person/person of color (US term) in the UK!
Golly sounds silly, which is contrary to the Earnest sweetness of Mollstrade.
I actually really dislike ‘Mollstrade’, mostly because it creates problems – one ‘l’ or two? Who knows? I prefer Lestrolly.
This is straight-up gorgeous descriptive analysis, and that’s coming from a flan who ~*still*~ finds the aesthetic preferability of the “/ orthograph” to be inarguable.
WELL DONE.
This article fills my heart with joy.
Question, because I’m better at squeeing about linguistics than understanding it:
If the ship name doesn’t work because of visual or auditory resemblance to the name of another character in the same work, is that a subset of Lexical Neighborhood Evaluation or of Orthographic Transparency?
So, like, take Tolkien fandom: Stress match is hard to do because there are so many BUH-buh stress patterns, but some of them should combine well on sheer consonant power, but they don’t. The sort of poster child Silmarillion slash pairing is Maedhros/Fingon. Findhros has an awkward consonant cluster in the middle if you don’t pronounce the first name “My-thros” (which not everyone does). Maegon should work — but the people referenced have a cousin/nephew named Maeglin, so it doesn’t. I’m thinking that’s Lexical Neighborhood?
(I was seriously thinking of writing an academic paper about trans and genderqueer characters in Silmarillion fics this one time, so, it would be good for me to understand this.)
Resemblance is a Lexical Neighborhood Evaluation issue. Orthographic Transparency is the issue you identified with Findhros where the pronunciation doesn’t obviously follow from the spelling (though in that case it’s not an artifact of the ship name so much as Quenya transliteration).
This was really, really fun. Blended ship names really took off just after my main fannish involvement (so far), back in the Stargate SG-1 days, and there were a whole bunch of us resistant to them when they started popping up. I see their utility on tumblr and other tag-heavy places, though, and now kinda love the ones that are imaginative or punny.
Yeah, “Jam” or “Sack” don’t really work for Sam/Jack!
There are Chris Kirkpatrick/Lance Bass shippers? What a time to be alive!
Don’t hate! It’s called popslash and it’s amazing! ‘Nsync and Backstreet Boys RPS – exploded in the early 2000’s, but it’s a little quieter now. Best, most creative fandom I’ve ever encountered!
I love this so much I’m going to have to start shipping us now – Gretchanie or Melchen, take your pick.
This is wonderful, but I will RAIL AGAINST portmanteau ship names until my last breath.
My PEOPLE. They’re confusing, my brain just doesn’t work like that. I have gone into many a Supernatural fic wondering how they were going to pull off a crossover with Sabriel because the author didn’t like the (clear, straightforward) alternative of Sam/Gabriel.
As someone who never liked Veronica with Logan OR Duncan… what could possibly be done with Veronica/Troy? Trove? Vertroy? This is why I stick to Name1/Name2.
I think your go-to there is Tron.
Blessings upon your house for that Deastiel gif!!
I got like a paragraph in and you mentioned Ollicity and I was just enraged at the wrongness of it. I know it’s canon, and I don’t care, because it is wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Okay, now back to the article.
ETA: Ichabbie is also wrong, for similar reasons.
The article, however is fascinating and delightful.
I’ve seriously soured on Arrow because of how Ollicity was handled. I mean, in season 1, it was perfect: she lusted openly after him when he was doing the salmon ladder, but had way too much common sense to fall for a manslut who puts his life in danger every single day, and he saw her as his Girl Friday. But then they retconned the whole thing with him saying that from the first moment he laid eyes on her it was love, and uuuuuuuugh.
(Also: this article was amazing. Love this kind of academic analysis of pop/internet culture phenomena)
So if I were to hypothetically ship T.E Lawrence and Percy Grainger based on their shared interest of whips, how would I combine their names? The best I could come up with was Lawnger, and that’s..not very good. Graince?
“T.Ercy Lawgrainge”?
Both of your solutions are definitely better than mine. Just not great names for a portmanteau shipping pairing.
LawGrainge on its own maybe? That might work…
This is admittedly an area in which I have no skill, but I’d call them PerTE, pronounced like a twangy “pretty.”
Okay, this is way late, but I would vote for ‘Lawrainger’, personally.
I would go with Perabia for Percy Grainger and Lawrence of Arabia.
Whipslash
If I ever create a TV show, I’m gonna name the characters such that the best ships have the worst portmanteaus, just to be ornery.
That’s why I love shipping both Astrids (or Olivias) from Fringe. Their shipping name is Astrid as far as I’m concerned.
So, serious question: does this only apply to English-derived names? Because my time in anime fandom has taught me that whoever’s name is first is the dom and the second person is the sub. Therefore, Taito is an entirely different beast than Yamachi, despite both involving Taichi and Yamato. Or does this mark ke as old and not up with the current shipping nomenclature?
…I have never heard this at all. I haven’t found that any of the above mentioned ‘ships that I’m familiar with even have designated (fanon) dom/sub situations. Or at all. This puts a very different spin on the portmanteaus and jeez, I have very conflicted feelings about this. Is all anime shipping set up in these power dynamic situations?
I definitely remember “Seme’s name comes first” being a thing in English-speaking anime &manga fandoms about 15-20 years ago. (i.e. If you shipped Heero and Duo in Gundam Wing, 1×2 and 2×1 were considered effectively different pairings despite involving the same people.) This was never really a thing in fandoms for media native to the US/UK/Australia afaik, though.
Yes! I was hoping someone would mention GW fan conventions! Almost all the character names map to numbers, so headers looked like algebraic equations. “1×2, 3×4, 13×5, 13×6, 6×9, 13xUne.”
And then all the Trowa/Quatre and Quatre/Trowa fans would get in huge flamewars over which was more canonical, 3×4 or 4×3, and the few Zechs/Noin shippers would get in a snit at all the m/m fans and flounce out.
it was always fun when you’d get something like 1x2x1+5/6
what does it even meeeeaaaannn
“Heero tops Duo except when Duo tops Heero. Both are FWB with Wufei who’s having it off with Treize on the side in a tsundere fashion.”
15 years ago…exactly.
I can’t believe that of all things, it’s not being up on shipping name conventions that’s making me officially Out Of Touch.
That’s definitely an anime fandom convention. It confused me greatly when I made the jump to Western-based fandoms. I was also initially thrown by the use of “chan” to describe underaged relationships in Western fandoms.
this is so much a thing that on tumblr, a lot of the Haru+Rin Free! fans refer to the pairing as “sharkbait” to get around the whole issue of who gets to be the crybaby wimpy tsundere bottom, because they reject that forced characterisation so strongly.
i haven’t seen a similar term for the other main Free! pairings, though. possibly because those characters already fit the assumed roles?
Roswell fandom decided to create a thousand shipper names that were impossible to remember. There were the OTPS of course (Polecats. Dreamers. Rebels. Ground Zeroers, etc.) but every conceivable threesome had a name, too! And foursomes, probably.
I was hoping someone had brought up the roswell ship names! The threesomes were IMPOSSIBLE for me to remember, but I will always always ALWAYS FOREVER be a Candygirl! 🙂
What’s wrong with Laurilla?
The Orthographical Transparency issue? I don’t know if that’s LAW-rilla or Loh-RILla.
Trickyfish!!
All the ‘Nsync portmanteaus are amazing, but I always thought Trickyfish was the best. I’m surprised the author didn’t mention that popslash is the fandom where pairing name smooshes were practically INVENTED! There’s even a Fanlore page dedicated to them. It’s a thing of beauty.
The webseries is strong with this post!
But seriously, yay for NMTD, Carmilla, and any associated productions whose ship names I missed.
MY HOPE FOR A TIBETTE MENTION WAS NOT MISPLACED!
“Larry Stylinson is a rare example of a double-barrelled ship name, where both first and last names combine well with each other so fans opt to use them both together.”
FILLIAM H. MUFFMAN 4EVER!
Gretchen McCulloch! If only I took LING 201 a year earlier, you might have been my TA. I had no idea you also run All Things Linguistic too, which is a joy and pleasure whenever it pops up on my dash. I was just thinking about that real rules for passive tense post from a few days ago, which vindicated everything that dark little voice at the back of my mind ever whispered to me, but that I was too meek to actually say. Damn you, Strunk & White.
Actually the Tony/Steve/Bruce ship name is StarK-Spangled Banner, not Star-Spangled Banner.
Love the article!
AAAAHHHHH I bought that issue at the newsstand!!! But I already knew what shipping was because I spent a lot of time on the internet.
Don’t hate! It’s called popslash and it’s amazing! ‘Nsync and Backstreet Boys RPS – exploded in the early 2000’s, but it’s a little quieter now. Best, most creative fandom I’ve ever encountered!
Can I raise a grammar point? I always write ‘ship because something is elided (namely “relation”) and I’m pedantic like that. But I honestly feel like it’s a losing battle. Do you think there’s an advantage at all, especially to distinguish ‘ships from ships?
I see your point, but I would argue that it’s more of an orthographic issue than a grammatical one. Also, language is always changing, The Internet Youth might not know it’s short for ‘relationship,’ and it’s probably sufficiently evolved and been used enough to have entered [internet] common vocabulary enough to lose the apostrophe.
signed, a descriptive linguist
Yes! A combination of two of my favorite this: linguistics and shipping (shipguistics?).
I cam from the anime-side of fandom and we smushed the hell out of names, even though Japanese names/words don’t come apart in the way that English does (or at least that’s my understanding). In my fandoms, whoever was named first in the portmanteau was the “top” – maybe this was only in guy/guy pairings? – so reading a Kensuke fic could be a very different experience than reading a Daiken.
I love every single thing about this.
And of course, any mention of shipping must involve Not Literally: https://youtu.be/LCDgJiPBxfI
” Some people trace the rise in blend names to the increasing fandom importance of tumblr, whose tagging system doesn’t support slash marks.”
This explains so much! I took a break from fandom around the time it was migrating from LJ to tumblr (late ’00s?) and was so confused that there were no slashes in my slash anymore.
Also, it was MCU that brought me back so I got all excited thinking Darcy/Lizzie was femslash with some character I didn’t remember… D’oh.
Anyway this whole article was wonderful and glorious, thank you!
Wonderful! I saw this via a former Linguistics student. I’ll share this the next time I teach Linguistics. Thanks!
Klaus*
Was so nice to see Adoribull here, though that one was actually contested for a while lol. The pre-launch fans used bullstache a lot, it’s still interchangeable some places. They’re kind of awesome for puns altogether 😀 some people also use doribull to be truer to the spelling.
More like people used “Bullstache” before they found out it was ACTUALLY CANON, and it’s so hard not to go through their canon romance without going “awwww how adorable!” (Especially since Trespasser. Bioware is so good to us).
The Sherlolly gif makes my shipping decisions (and thus me) feel legitimized on an internet where Johnlock is the norm. THANK YOU.
Also, the piece was excellent.
I kind of hate portmanteaus but I cannot deny they are both handy to use and wildly interesting to think about.
Stark Spangled Banner is probably one of the wittiest ship names I’ve ever come across. That and Dr Pepperony for Bruce/Pepper/Tony.
Also I think I’ve seen Everlark most often on Tumblr when it comes to Katniss/Peeta shippers?
Then there are those pairings that cannot be named by the usual conventions – I speak of Bruce Banner and Tony Stark. Tuce sounds wrong, and Brony is too easily confused with another fandom. They ended up with the fitting and friendly Science Bros.
This is my everything. Also, I have a student I need to send it to.
this article left me with the paranoid feeling that i was pronouncing “graham” wrong – but a quick check with friends reassured me that “gram” is the way to go. who pronounces graham otherwise? is it the british?
Yep – I am English, and we pronounce it “GRAY-um”. Two syllables.
Actually, the first widespread use of ship portmanteaus in my memory were from Buffy. Bangel and Spuffy were both used, though the first may have only come to be used once it was necessary, ie once Spuffy existed. Since it isn’t as catchy as Spuffy, it wasn’t as ubiquitous, but Spuffy was absolutely ubiquitous.
There were definitely lots of blends in the harry potter fandom community in the early 2000s (long before tumblr) like Dramione along with things like WolfStar for Sirius/Remus (I guess because they got weird names). It’s interesting that my favorite current pairing name, Throbb for Theon/Robb, I thought was always chosen for the more inappropriate connotations still fits with the general rules setup here.
I remember HP fandom being conflicted about using portmantaeus – I think the idea I saw was you could use one if was particularly euphonic/popular, but shouldn’t try too hard to smush everybody’s names with each other (HP being an immense fandom with a great many characters and therefore having loads of ships) because that would be annoying.
Ha, times do change!
Pretty sure Destiel was supposed to evoke ‘destiny’ because it started as the whole prophesied Righteous Man/Angel arc. Plus it had to compete with Wincest, which is made of ‘win.’ All the best ship names are at least a little punny… ‘Sastiel’ by contrast is less popular and (related?) lacks a really satisfying pun for a name. ‘Sassy’ is used some, but while Sam and Castiel are both quite capable of sass, it is not a quality that defines their pairing by setting them apart from Dean, who can sass through the Apocalypse.
I think I’ve only seen “Spirk” used since the reboot a few years ago. I have no proof, but I feel certain it horrifies all the old-school Kirk/Spock fans.
I’m so glad silly fandom hobbies are providing linguists with useful data!
Also an example I feel must be mentioned is that when actors (on different shows) Orlando Jones and Misha Collins started talking shipping on Twitter, the shipname “Cojones” promptly won the day.
My personal favourite ship name has to be Veronica/Logan on Veronica Mars! LoVe is such a great name.
Had to like just because you got Hugh's name right!
This is a fantastic and fascinating article! When the heck did Snamione and Snack overtake the vastly superior Snermione and Snirius, though??
I was hoping someone had brought up the roswell ship names! The threesomes were IMPOSSIBLE for me to remember, but I will always always ALWAYS FOREVER be a Candygirl! 🙂
Tony/Steve/Bruce is Stark Spangled Banner, not star.
I imagine I’m not the only one to notice this but clearly a good test of these name-blends is if the result sounds like it could be a name in it’s own right. JohnLock has a nice ring to it. And one I’ve come across lately KyaLin (Kya + Lin) sounds like it must have been someone’s name at some point.