[Ads-l] Combining two people's names: Javanka

[Barretts Mail]

Today CNN has an article titled “Ivanka Trump's Worst Week in Washington” (http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/03/politics/ivanka-trump-worst-week-in-washington/index.html <http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/03/politics/ivanka-trump-worst-week-in-washington/index.html>) by Chris Cillizza in which he writes:

— 
Bannon represents a hard-charging, nationalist, populist, anti-establishment view of politics. Ivanka and her husband -- "Javanka" for short -- are far more liberal and moderate-minded.
—

This sort of name combination has occurred in the past, though I can’t think of any instances. 

There must be phonological rules at play, something somebody must have figured out by now. To borrow from words from grafting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting>), in this combination the stressed syllables in Jared (the scion) and Ivanka (the stock) are both preserved.

Also providing some welcome (imnsho) criticism of the word Javanka, the article "How a portmanteau for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner tore apart Twitter” (https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/javanka-ivanka-trump-jared-kushner/ <https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/javanka-ivanka-trump-jared-kushner/>) by David Covucci in the The Daily Dot provides more examples:

Ben Affleck + Jennifer Lopez = Bennifer
Brad Pitt + Angelina Jolie = Brangelina
Wilmer Valderrama + Lindsay Lohan = Lohalderrama

In each case, the stressed syllable in each is preserved, and in each case, the man’s name is given first on the left side of the equation regardless of alphabetical order and regardless of the ordering in the resulting combination.

Probable factors in how these are combined are that men’s names are frequently clipped to a monosyllabic form (thus having only one syllable from which to choose) and women’s names are frequently two or more syllables.

I have no love of the celebrosphere, or whatever it’s called, so here is another article with more words; perhaps this is a good project for a linguistics student:

http://www.suggest.com/celebs/532/14-best-celeb-supercouple-names-we-love-to-say/ <http://www.suggest.com/celebs/532/14-best-celeb-supercouple-names-we-love-to-say/>
 
Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org