With the latest celebrity incarnation, "Brangelina" - Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie - the melding of names for power couples is officially de rigueur.
By JAY CRIDLIN, Times Staff Writer
Published June 16, 2005
Reviews of Mr. and Mrs. Smith have identified the film's stars, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, as "Brangelina." Recently, the New York gossip column Gawker.com carried an item headlined, "The Brangelina has landed!" Jimmy Kimmel mentioned "Brangelina" on his late-night talk show.
Beg your pardon, but . . . "Brangelina"?
Never has the Frankensteinian melding of two separate words been more in vogue, whether it's of two names, one name (KenJen, a.k.a. Jeopardy!'s Ken Jennings) or two animals (liger, the exalted lion-tiger hybrid from Napoleon Dynamite).
The practice almost seems standard for omnipresent power couples. There's "TomKat" (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes), "Romber" (ex-Survivors Rob Mariano and Amber Brkich), "RenKen" (Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney) and "BenJen" (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner; obviously, the world has retired the hall of fame handle "Bennifer").
"It makes some degree of linguistic sense," said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "Ben Affleck was one entity. Jennifer Lopez was another entity. "Bennifer' was something else entirely. . . . The two of them created a monster that was different than either one of them."
Celebrity couple gossip has been around for decades, but Thompson said he can find no record of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton being known as, say, "Richabeth."
Two years ago, not long after his breakup with Lopez, Affleck devoted a Saturday Night Live monologue to the Bennifer tag. "How hard is it to say two names, instead of one?" he said. "You're not saving that much time!" He then whipped out a Bennifer T-shirt, followed by a line of shirts he hoped might fit future loves: Benyonce, Boprah and Mary-Kate and Ashfleck. "I'm pricing them to move," he said. "For $20, I'll sign 'em "Bennifer.' "
CELEBRITIES WHO SHOULD HOOK UP
Pamela Anderson and Bam Margera: PamBam
Chris Rock and Star Jones: RockStar
Shaquille O'Neal and Nicollette Sheridan: Shaquolette
