A Study of SNSD Portmanteaus
Abstract
There exists a need for a consistent and easy-to-learn system of creating pairing names. We examine the various mechanisms to generate pairing names and propose a system using portmanteaus, particularly based upon the first syllable of each SNSD members' names. This system requires little knowledge of the SNSD fandom beyond the members' names and perhaps their age, and produces no redundant names that would cause confusion.
Introduction
The purpose behind a nickname appears to be a way to more easily identify someone when their given name isn't distinctive enough, or to shorten a given name to something more catchy, and thus again make the identification process easier.[1] In the spirit of identification efficiency, when two people are commonly associated with each other referring to them as one unit would save the time of identifying each separately, an issue given further priority in today's super-time-sensitive internet culture.[2] Thus you have the pairing name, a fundamental part of the shipping tradition, and SNSD is no exception.
However, the use of these pairing names is often confusing to the new fan, particularly when multiple mechanisms of creating pairing names come into play. In a group as large as SNSD, this may even drive off potential new fans as there seems to be endless names to memorize,[3] when most of them are actually redundant descriptions of the same couple. Therefore this paper aims to examine the various mechanisms of pairing naming with the intent of choosing or proposing a system to be applied unilaterally to reduce such confusion as to what pairing a name refers to.
The functional requirements of such a system would be consistency/repeatability, effectiveness, a shallow learning curve, and succintness. A new fan should be able to learn the pairing name of one couple, extrapolate the mechanism easily from that pairing name, and be able to thus generate or identify all other pairing names knowing the individual members participating in a pairing. Therefore the same mechanism should be applied to all pairing names, the produced pairing names should not be applicable to multiple pairings, and they should not be too dependent on knowledge beyond the participating members' names. And the requirement of succintness would of course be to satisfy our culture's desires for fast identification and recall.
Background
Arguably the surname was the first version of the couple name, as the given name identified the individual and the surname identified which family they belonged to.[3] Therefore knowing the only wife's name would actually reveal both participating members. However in recent history this practice has become a point of contest because the wife was obligated to take the surname of the husband, which has been seen as a sexist practice.[6] A proposed solution has been to use the surnames of both sides of the family, separated by a hyphen, but this approach runs counter to the goal of saving time on the typing or speaking.
The Virgule method merely separates the participating members' names, such as a slash(/)-sign or an x/X-sign. It's original favored use in identifying Kirk/Spock was what spawned the term Slash as a classification of homoerotic fanfic in the first place. Some fandoms consider the use of a plus(+)-sign to indicate a pre-slash relationship.[6]
However virgule names are only succint in text, and lack the euphonic aspect that people favor sometimes.
Possibly the most common mechanism is the portmanteau: created by combining the letters of the participating members' names. Portmanteau was defined as a word in the 1800s by Lewis Carroll, but the practice of portmanteau in creating names has been in use much longer than that, including Pakistan.[8]
Portmanteau can act as an effective shorthand,[2] such as the shortening of So Nyuh Shi Dae to Soshi, and thus Shoujo Jidai would be similarly shortened to Shouji!?
The combination of the names can also symbolize the union of the two people in the relationship.[7] The way portmanteau is used in language to create words with new meaning derivative from its original words also reflects the evolution of a relationship as the personalities of its participating members begins to blend.[5]
Portmanteau is mainly based on names, although when needed(as in the case of names with redundant syllables) nicknames can also be portmanteaued.
Idiosyncratic ship naming is just where names are derived from elements of the story, such as events, objects, or terms/phrases associated with the pairing's interactions. It could also be based on shared personality traits of the participating members, and there have been some idiosyncratic ship names in other fandoms inspired by popular fanfics.[9]
Although these names are the most distinctive, they have a rather steep learning curve because they are dependent on knowledge of the fandom, to understand what the names are referring to. In addition, there is no consistent standard as to how these names are formulated, with a few coming from things as arbitrary as shared name syllables.(Perfume could be argued to be under this category as it came from the fact that the original lineup all had the kanji for "fragrant" in their name.)
Because portmanteau fulfills our requirements so well, and is the most common system currently employed in SNSD pairing names it is the focus on in this paper.
Methods
SNSD's stage names were each divided into a first half and a second half. The inclusion of Soonkyu will be discussed later in the paper. Different divisions of Jessica, Tiffany, and Yuri's names were included based on different divisions used in common pairing names.
Tables were used to create first-first, last-last, and first-last combinations of the name divisions.
For analysis purposes, combinations with doubles were highlighted as green, combinations commonly seen across Soshified, Soshipops and JPHIP were underlined, and an asterisk(*) suffix was attached to notable variations to be addressed in the discussion section.
Arbitrarily I added a @-prefix to the combinations I found extra amusing.
Results and Discussion
There arose a few inclusions coming from pronunciation differences between the West and East: Most people in the West pronounce Yoona instinctively as Yoo-Na rather than Yoon-a as the characters suggest. All common Yoona pairing names involving her first syllable use Yoon rather than Yoo, but there is potential for confusion when you consider that Yuri is split into Yu and Ri. There is further confusion potential when you observe that despite the character split into Yu and Ri most Yuri pairings use Yul for a first syllable instead of Yu. That's a shame, I would have liked to have had a @YooRi entry in my table as an alternative to YoonYul.
TaeSic could be considered a commonly used name, but in the variation of Taengsic. Yet the Taeng-variation isn't seen elsewhere, and I've never seen a Yoong-variation at all.
In terms of consistency, only the First-first table contains no doubles, coming from the repeat of the Yeon ending syllable from Taeyeon and Hyoyeon, and the repeat of the Ny syllable from Sunny and Tiffany. The Ny-repeat is easily avoided by using Fany in lieu of Ny for Tiffany's ending syllable, yet Taeny and Jeny are popular portmanteaus including Tiffany. Another possible solution is to use the SoonKyu split instead of Sunny, to allow the continued use of Taeny and Jeny as they are known now, but that brings up the issue of the Kyu syllable being easily mistaken for Super Junior's Kyuhyun, as SeoKyu and Kyuyoung are popular pairing names in that genre. The Yeon-repeat can only be avoided by forgoing the use of last-syllables altogether.
In that vein, the only last-last portmanteau that could be construed as a common pairing name is NyNy, the basis behind idiosyncratic pairing name 2ny.
After knowing what part of each member's names is to be used in the portmanteau,(assumed here to be First-first) the next question is the order with which to arrange them. The tables used would suggest a system based on age, with names above the diagonal to be ordered by seniority, but usually people just rely on euphony for their order of choice. However, this is quite subjective and would encourage inconsistency.
The order's usefulness seems to depend on the context within which the pairing name is used, particularly for fanfiction. It may be more useful to place the more prominent character first, to indicate their importance to the story. Another common convention is to put the more dominant personality first.[6]
Based upon the individual matchups in the snsd_metacrack bitch ranking. Ties in the individual matchups were broken by the final weigthed bitch ranking.[10] Dammit Jeti!
Conclusions
Upon reviewing the mechanisms of pairing naming systems, we find that portmanteaus fulfill the requirements of consistency/repeatability, effectiveness, a shallow learning curve, and succintness very well. For SNSD pairings, this system should be based upon only the first syllable in their names. Order of syllable placement should be determined based on context of use. This system can also be applied for ships containing more than two members just by appending further first syllables.
Further study should be made concerning the priority of sentimentality versus succintness in pairing naming, as an abbreviated virgule system of pairing names contain the least amount of characters to type but lack the emotional familiarity and euphonic appeal of the portmanteaus.
Additional research should also be done taking non-SNSD idols into consideration, as they could add redundant first syllables, rendering the effectiveness of the first-first system irrelevant, and would bring the idiosyncratic naming system back into play, albeit at the cost of the learning curve. If the idiosyncratic system could be simplified this problem could be resolved. Regardless, currently the idiosyncratic system for SNSD(from SSF) is under-developed.
A tangential issue to consider would be that sometimes shippers have names for themselves, which could affect the aesthetic appeal of their chosen pairing name.[9] Jessica/Tiffany shippers at Soshified thus chose "Jetidal wave surfers" over "Gortastics" or "JeNyaaahs" on such standards.
References
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickname
2. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PortmanteauSeriesNickname
3. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname
5. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5239464.stm
6. http://fanlore.org/wiki/Pairing_Name
7. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002610.html
8. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PortmanteauCoupleName
9. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiosyncraticShipNaming
10. http://community.livejournal.com/snsd_metacrack/9566.html
There exists a need for a consistent and easy-to-learn system of creating pairing names. We examine the various mechanisms to generate pairing names and propose a system using portmanteaus, particularly based upon the first syllable of each SNSD members' names. This system requires little knowledge of the SNSD fandom beyond the members' names and perhaps their age, and produces no redundant names that would cause confusion.
Introduction
The purpose behind a nickname appears to be a way to more easily identify someone when their given name isn't distinctive enough, or to shorten a given name to something more catchy, and thus again make the identification process easier.[1] In the spirit of identification efficiency, when two people are commonly associated with each other referring to them as one unit would save the time of identifying each separately, an issue given further priority in today's super-time-sensitive internet culture.[2] Thus you have the pairing name, a fundamental part of the shipping tradition, and SNSD is no exception.
However, the use of these pairing names is often confusing to the new fan, particularly when multiple mechanisms of creating pairing names come into play. In a group as large as SNSD, this may even drive off potential new fans as there seems to be endless names to memorize,[3] when most of them are actually redundant descriptions of the same couple. Therefore this paper aims to examine the various mechanisms of pairing naming with the intent of choosing or proposing a system to be applied unilaterally to reduce such confusion as to what pairing a name refers to.
The functional requirements of such a system would be consistency/repeatability, effectiveness, a shallow learning curve, and succintness. A new fan should be able to learn the pairing name of one couple, extrapolate the mechanism easily from that pairing name, and be able to thus generate or identify all other pairing names knowing the individual members participating in a pairing. Therefore the same mechanism should be applied to all pairing names, the produced pairing names should not be applicable to multiple pairings, and they should not be too dependent on knowledge beyond the participating members' names. And the requirement of succintness would of course be to satisfy our culture's desires for fast identification and recall.
Background
Arguably the surname was the first version of the couple name, as the given name identified the individual and the surname identified which family they belonged to.[3] Therefore knowing the only wife's name would actually reveal both participating members. However in recent history this practice has become a point of contest because the wife was obligated to take the surname of the husband, which has been seen as a sexist practice.[6] A proposed solution has been to use the surnames of both sides of the family, separated by a hyphen, but this approach runs counter to the goal of saving time on the typing or speaking.
The Virgule method merely separates the participating members' names, such as a slash(/)-sign or an x/X-sign. It's original favored use in identifying Kirk/Spock was what spawned the term Slash as a classification of homoerotic fanfic in the first place. Some fandoms consider the use of a plus(+)-sign to indicate a pre-slash relationship.[6]
However virgule names are only succint in text, and lack the euphonic aspect that people favor sometimes.
Possibly the most common mechanism is the portmanteau: created by combining the letters of the participating members' names. Portmanteau was defined as a word in the 1800s by Lewis Carroll, but the practice of portmanteau in creating names has been in use much longer than that, including Pakistan.[8]
Portmanteau can act as an effective shorthand,[2] such as the shortening of So Nyuh Shi Dae to Soshi, and thus Shoujo Jidai would be similarly shortened to Shouji!?
The combination of the names can also symbolize the union of the two people in the relationship.[7] The way portmanteau is used in language to create words with new meaning derivative from its original words also reflects the evolution of a relationship as the personalities of its participating members begins to blend.[5]
Portmanteau is mainly based on names, although when needed(as in the case of names with redundant syllables) nicknames can also be portmanteaued.
Idiosyncratic ship naming is just where names are derived from elements of the story, such as events, objects, or terms/phrases associated with the pairing's interactions. It could also be based on shared personality traits of the participating members, and there have been some idiosyncratic ship names in other fandoms inspired by popular fanfics.[9]
Although these names are the most distinctive, they have a rather steep learning curve because they are dependent on knowledge of the fandom, to understand what the names are referring to. In addition, there is no consistent standard as to how these names are formulated, with a few coming from things as arbitrary as shared name syllables.(Perfume could be argued to be under this category as it came from the fact that the original lineup all had the kanji for "fragrant" in their name.)
Because portmanteau fulfills our requirements so well, and is the most common system currently employed in SNSD pairing names it is the focus on in this paper.
Methods
SNSD's stage names were each divided into a first half and a second half. The inclusion of Soonkyu will be discussed later in the paper. Different divisions of Jessica, Tiffany, and Yuri's names were included based on different divisions used in common pairing names.
Tables were used to create first-first, last-last, and first-last combinations of the name divisions.
For analysis purposes, combinations with doubles were highlighted as green, combinations commonly seen across Soshified, Soshipops and JPHIP were underlined, and an asterisk(*) suffix was attached to notable variations to be addressed in the discussion section.
Arbitrarily I added a @-prefix to the combinations I found extra amusing.
Results and Discussion
There arose a few inclusions coming from pronunciation differences between the West and East: Most people in the West pronounce Yoona instinctively as Yoo-Na rather than Yoon-a as the characters suggest. All common Yoona pairing names involving her first syllable use Yoon rather than Yoo, but there is potential for confusion when you consider that Yuri is split into Yu and Ri. There is further confusion potential when you observe that despite the character split into Yu and Ri most Yuri pairings use Yul for a first syllable instead of Yu. That's a shame, I would have liked to have had a @YooRi entry in my table as an alternative to YoonYul.
TaeSic could be considered a commonly used name, but in the variation of Taengsic. Yet the Taeng-variation isn't seen elsewhere, and I've never seen a Yoong-variation at all.
In terms of consistency, only the First-first table contains no doubles, coming from the repeat of the Yeon ending syllable from Taeyeon and Hyoyeon, and the repeat of the Ny syllable from Sunny and Tiffany. The Ny-repeat is easily avoided by using Fany in lieu of Ny for Tiffany's ending syllable, yet Taeny and Jeny are popular portmanteaus including Tiffany. Another possible solution is to use the SoonKyu split instead of Sunny, to allow the continued use of Taeny and Jeny as they are known now, but that brings up the issue of the Kyu syllable being easily mistaken for Super Junior's Kyuhyun, as SeoKyu and Kyuyoung are popular pairing names in that genre. The Yeon-repeat can only be avoided by forgoing the use of last-syllables altogether.
In that vein, the only last-last portmanteau that could be construed as a common pairing name is NyNy, the basis behind idiosyncratic pairing name 2ny.
After knowing what part of each member's names is to be used in the portmanteau,(assumed here to be First-first) the next question is the order with which to arrange them. The tables used would suggest a system based on age, with names above the diagonal to be ordered by seniority, but usually people just rely on euphony for their order of choice. However, this is quite subjective and would encourage inconsistency.
The order's usefulness seems to depend on the context within which the pairing name is used, particularly for fanfiction. It may be more useful to place the more prominent character first, to indicate their importance to the story. Another common convention is to put the more dominant personality first.[6]
Based upon the individual matchups in the snsd_metacrack bitch ranking. Ties in the individual matchups were broken by the final weigthed bitch ranking.[10] Dammit Jeti!
Conclusions
Upon reviewing the mechanisms of pairing naming systems, we find that portmanteaus fulfill the requirements of consistency/repeatability, effectiveness, a shallow learning curve, and succintness very well. For SNSD pairings, this system should be based upon only the first syllable in their names. Order of syllable placement should be determined based on context of use. This system can also be applied for ships containing more than two members just by appending further first syllables.
Further study should be made concerning the priority of sentimentality versus succintness in pairing naming, as an abbreviated virgule system of pairing names contain the least amount of characters to type but lack the emotional familiarity and euphonic appeal of the portmanteaus.
Additional research should also be done taking non-SNSD idols into consideration, as they could add redundant first syllables, rendering the effectiveness of the first-first system irrelevant, and would bring the idiosyncratic naming system back into play, albeit at the cost of the learning curve. If the idiosyncratic system could be simplified this problem could be resolved. Regardless, currently the idiosyncratic system for SNSD(from SSF) is under-developed.
A tangential issue to consider would be that sometimes shippers have names for themselves, which could affect the aesthetic appeal of their chosen pairing name.[9] Jessica/Tiffany shippers at Soshified thus chose "Jetidal wave surfers" over "Gortastics" or "JeNyaaahs" on such standards.
References
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickname
2. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PortmanteauSeriesNickname
3. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname
5. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5239464.stm
6. http://fanlore.org/wiki/Pairing_Name
7. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002610.html
8. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PortmanteauCoupleName
9. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiosyncraticShipNaming
10. http://community.livejournal.com/snsd_metacrack/9566.html