- This was posted as the “Ask Yahoo” question of the day for today:
Dear Yahoo!: Who came up with the idea of calling celebrity couples by one uni-name? It’s annoyingJeff
Decatur, Michigan
Dear Jeff: You’ll get no argument from us — this trend is extremely annoying. “Bennifer” was sort of funny the first time we heard it. But then Brangelina, TomKat, and Bennifer 2.0 came along, and our amusement quickly plummeted. So who’s to blame for the uni-name?
Fox News notes the trend started when Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez began dating back in late 2002 or early 2003. Those were dark days. Tabloids couldn’t get enough of the couple, reporting every move Ben and Jen made. Somewhere during the madness, Bennifer was coined.
As for who came up with the nickname, we don’t know. Courtney Shea, a.k.a. the Gossipy Gal Pal, writes that trying to find out who coined “Bennifer” is a bit like “delving into the whole business of the grassy knoll. Everyone has a theory and many are eager to take credit.” Why anyone would want credit for unleashing this plague upon pop culture is beyond us, but there ya go.
For what it’s worth, “portmanteau” is the technical name for a word “formed by merging the sounds and meanings of two different words.” And, believe it or not, Lewis Carroll coined that word’s usage in “Through the Looking Glass.” Maybe we should blame him?
This is easy and documented, thanks to our News Askew archives. The term first appeared in an LA Times piece that we posted here on January 12th, 2003. Here’s the text:
Smith wanted to make “Jersey Girl” in 1999 right after “Dogma,” but there was the Jay and Silent Bob problem. The duo — neighborhood friend Jason Mewes as foulmouthed, id-dominated Jay and Smith as the taciturn Bob — had been effective slacker characters in each of his movies. There was no room for them in “Jersey Girl,” which, as Smith says, “stopped being ‘a Kevin Smith movie’ and became a ‘Jen and Ben movie,’ or a ‘Bennifer movie,’ as we call it now.” Still, Smith wanted a sense of closure — a way to acknowledge to the cult that without Jay and Silent Bob’s presence in his earlier films, “Jersey Girl” never could have happened. So he made “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” (2001), in which the two losers head from New Jersey to Hollywood to prevent a studio from corrupting a comic book based on their lives.
For the record, that was just meant as an inside joke that grew out of control, so folks who blame Kevin for the press’s overuse of the concept (and sort-of spoiling of the joke), that’s not his fault. We think the pinnacle of the fun was Affleck’s SNL monloogue (remember “Boprah”?). After that, the press just got too carried away with it. However, who coined “Bennifer”? Kevin himself, on January 12th, 2003. Take that, Yahoo Answers!
