The Dialect Of The Internet/Tumblr

Hi there, so I’m Elliott and I’m a languages student who absolutely fucking loves the linguistics of written internet English. This will be an archive of all the posts I find on the subject of tumblr/the internet’s linguistics and punctuation — enjoy!

[glitter-bunny420]

A simple guide of tone indicators for those who need it

/j = joking

/hj = half-joking

/lh = light-hearted

/s = sarcasm

/g or /gen = genuine tone or genuine question

/p = platonic

Keep reading

[linguatumbla]

Thank you so much for creating a more exhaustive list!

However, although I do love tone indicators, I only reblogged the post you're referring to - all the credit belongs to the op, @reecebug!

[relaxxattack]

im gonna sound fucking high; but there’s just something about minecraft ‘body language’, man.

the way people crouch and do little bounces/bows to say hello, i’m friendly! the way they punch as a substitute for pointing or waving hello. the slow pulling out of weapon as a threat, quickly removing armor to show you are peaceful. sticking little signs in the ground and writing messages. the way people‘s avatars go still when they are thinking, or laughing so much their hands came off the keyboard. square eye contact. jumping, spinning, bobbing your head to music. punching your friend jokingly.

half of it is human perception but the other half is ways of communication we created ourselves, because people just are like that. they express themselves.

i know its just a block game but looking at it is so soothing and im feeling emotional tonight

[bluedancingkittykat]

I found a linguistic survey I think y’all would be interested in!! ;)

https://twitter.com/serioustweetss/status/1374447063337857024?s=21

https://forms.gle/iUZemF7bovupZ8Ls6

How do People Interpret Smileys?

Hello! My name is Luci Farrell and I am a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I am doing a research project on how different grou

Pro on Twitter

“we are a go!!! This survey will be open for 4 weeks (until 4/20 11:59 AKST) Help spread the word to help me get as many responses as possib

[00437bedsheets]

it’s pretty much common knowledge on twitter but i don’t know if they’re widespread anywhere else? they might be, who knows, but i wanna make an informational post anyway

tone indicators!!!!

a tone indicator is a little addition to the end of a sentence, post, etc. that confirms the tone you typed it in! it’s REALLY helpful for neurodivergent people like me because in my own personal experience it’s hard for me to tell what people are exactly trying to say sometimes, especially over text. the main tone indicators i see people use are:

/j (joke)

/hj (half joking)

/lh (lighthearted)

/s (sarcasm)

/g or /gen (genuine)

/p (platonic)

/srs (serious)

/lyr (lyrics)

/c (copypasta)

/q (quote)

here are some examples:

i’m pissed off /srs

i love you!!! /p

wow way to go /s

i’ve been insensitive, i’m sorry /gen

so on and so forth!!! spread the word :)

[coquelicoq]

“Irony is a linguistic trust fall. When I write or speak with a double meaning, I fall backwards, hoping that you’ll be there to catch me. The risks are high: misaimed irony can gravely injure the conversation. But the rewards are high, too: the sublime joy of feeling purely understood, the comfort of knowing someone’s on your side. No wonder people through the ages kept trying so hard to write it. If polite typography, as we saw earlier, is about making extra effort, using initial capitals and friendly exclamation marks to signal cheerful distance or genuine enthusiasm, then ironic typography is the opposite on both counts: it introduces a note of dissonance that makes the reader look harder to find the double meaning. Any variation from an expected baseline will do, whether that’s lowercasing, sparkle sarcasm, asking a rhetorical question by omitting the question mark, or ironically using outdated slang (one much-reblogged post on Tumblr noted that saying something is ‘great’ indicates that it’s genuinely good, whereas something that’s described as 'gr8’ is a guilty pleasure or appreciated sarcastically). But crucially, irony requires this baseline in the first place. It required us to develop a set of typographical resources for indicating straightforward types of voices, like shouting and enthusiasm, before we could creatively subvert them.”

— Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, pp. 148-149

[worldiary]

Th🙏🏾nk you for taking the time to read this emoji linguistics PSA.

[allthingslinguistic]

The Complicated Decisions That Come With Digitizing Indigenous Languages

Putting the languages on the internet means that communities have to make complicated decisions about what to share and when.

An article in Slate about language revitalization in the digital era. Excerpt: 

At a recent conference called Breath of Life 2.0, held at Miami University of Ohio, participants explored the possibilities and pitfalls of archival databases. For the people involved in language revitalization work, whether they’re awakening a dormant language (one that no longer has fluent speakers) or trying to prevent an existing language from losing all its speakers, one of the major obstacles is a lack of digital resources.

Jerome Viles experienced that firsthand. An enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and part of the Southwest Oregon Dene Languages Project team, Viles helps organize archival materials produced by linguists and community members over the past 100 years. First, his community had to findthe documents, which were scattered in institutions across the country. But the other problem was organizing and reconciling them. For instance, some records of language may have been written by French Jesuits who came to North America to convert Native American people. But even if three Jesuits worked with the same tribe, they could all have different spelling systems. Then there are audio recordings from the 1800s and 1900s, plus ethnographic material collected by anthropologists.

What Viles’ group and many others needed was a way to collect and compare thousands of words across multiple generations and several dialects. And that’s where the Indigenous Language Digital Archive came in. ILDA is a database built by engineers at Miami University in collaboration with the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma (which built an earlier form of the database specifically for its own language revitalization work). At the Breath of Life 2.0 conference, participants learned how to navigate the software and move their documents into one big digital space. By the end of the five days, a few surprising discoveries had emerged. Community members from the Northern Paiute, working on the Numu language, were tickled to find seven different ways to say “our husband.”

“I was getting a kick out of that,” said Nicholas Cortez. “I was like, where’s this ‘our’ coming from?”

Read the whole thing. 

[pervocracy]

Part of the New Internet Grammar: using question marks not to denote questions, but upturns in voice, so that a tentative statement gets a question mark but a flatly delivered question doesn’t.

[argumate]

why would you do this

[pervocracy]

It just seems right?

[allthingslinguistic]

Linguistics takes on the “in this house” ascii meme: 

In this house, we treat all languages, dialects, and accents as valid.

[allthingslinguistic]

Tumblr is one of the most popular content sharing websites, where the use of keyword tags that enhance the searchability and visibility of posts is pr…

I’m currently reading this very recent article about tumblr tags by Elli E.Bourlai. Highlights and abstract: 

• Comment tags are more popular among fandoms. •They are longer than keyword tags and have higher presence of special characters. •Comment tags have 3 main discourse functions: opinion, reaction, aside. •Reaction is the most popular discourse function of comment tags. •Both social structure and technological design influence social tagging in Tumblr.

Tumblr is one of the most popular content sharing websites, where the use of keyword tags that enhance the searchability and visibility of posts is prominent. However, this resource has been creatively exploited by some users beyond its folksonomic use: Since Tumblr does not have a separate comment section for posts, the tag section may also be used for tags with discourse functions such as expressing an opinion, a reaction, or including asides. This article explores the practice of including comments in tags, taking into account the specific technological features of Tumblr’s tagging system, as well as the role of the communities within the website.

The corpus analyzed in the study comprises two datasets collected from the general ‘Trending’ page of Tumblr and 60 fan communities (‘fandoms’). Comment tags and their identified discourse functions (opinion, reaction, aside) are analyzed quantitatively for differences regarding use, structure, and sentiment. The analysis shows significant differences between the comment tags and traditional keyword tags, as well as among comment tags with the three different discourse functions. The results suggest that social tagging practices on Tumblr are influenced both by the technological specifications of the platform and the social structure of the website.

The full article is paywalled here, but if it gets posted publically at some point in the future, it should be findable using this Google Scholar search. 

Previously by the same author (full text) - Multimodal communication on tumblr: “I have so many feels!”

[parksanddeserts]

It still fascinates me that I often see people on Dutch twitter use ‘when you’ as an untranslated meme. It is interesting, because Dutch syntax is different than English syntax, and therefore ‘borrowing’ a conjunction is not as straightforward as it may seem.

On the one hand, Dutch ‘wanneer’ (’when’) triggers a subordinate clause, and in Dutch sub-clauses the verb comes in final position. So, if you analyse ‘when’ as an equivalent of ‘wanneer’, you would therefore get the sentence below:

when you een Engelse meme in het Nederlands gebruikt… lit: ‘when you an English meme in Dutch use.’

On the other hand, ‘when’ is not Dutch, and some people feel that it triggers a more English-like order - after all, it’s an English function word. This yields (to me weird-sounding) sentences like: when you gebruikt een Engelse meme in het Nederlands lit: ‘when you use an English meme in Dutch’ So, thanks to English memes, we have actually started to use weird syntactic structures that would usually be considered ungrammatical in Dutch.

[feywildwest]

one of the weirdest ways that language is evolving in response to the internet is that “bad words” just. do not have the same impact anymore. i constantly forget that some people think ‘fuck you’ is a terrible insult

so threats and insults have to start getting really out there if the person wants to even mean anything. if a person told me to die i’d shrug it off but if i opened a post’s tags and saw “op i will sneak into your house and replace all your shoelaces with cooked pasta” do you know how shaken i’d be? do you know how upset i’d be if i saw “op is the personification of the look you share w other people in the grocery store when some dude is causing A Scene™ for no reason”

[zmyaro]

So you are saying English curses on the Internet are becoming more like Yiddish curses?

[feywildwest]

I sincerely hope so but I can’t say I’m familiar with yiddish curses and i am begging you to tell me a few

[gallusrostromegalus]

My Personal favorite is:

“May all your teeth fall out, except for one, to give you a toothache.”

[tumblinguistics]

The dissertation is here!

I finally managed to get hold of a copy of my dissertation! You can read it on Google Docs HERE. Please feel free to download and cite the work if it helps you with your own studies. :)

[allthingslinguistic]

How many times people repeat the “u” in “fuck” on twitter, from a study of how people say fuck on twitter that also includes this excellent set of examples:  

In the case of the f-word, we found that while the average usage was (unsurprisingly) negative, a quarter of the tweets were strongly positive. To illustrate this emotional mélange, we selected nine representative examples at various intervals with inferred sentiment shown in parenthesis. For comparative purposes (and because this is the internet) all of the selected tweets pertain to cats.

- I hate cats.. just evil little fuckers (-0.91) - I just want to go to fucking sleep these stupid ass cats are fighting right outside my window (-0.85) - I just got a cat fucking drunk and he’s abusive (-0.78) - i want a cat now who the fuck am i (-0.49) - Let your cat be a fucking cat. (0.0) - honestly scaring cats is fucking hilarious (0.48) - aye bruh how bout you show yo cats some love too mufucka (0.64) - Cats are just so fucking perfect and I love them and want them all (0.88) - I FUCKING LOVE MY CATS SO MUCH LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL GUY I SWEAR WHAT A SMART LOYAL LOVING ANIMAL GIFTED TO ME (0.96)

[evihcra-n3rpsts1m]

wait

so only 12 people (ONLY 12?? that’s a lot let’s be real here) answered my survey. thanks guys!! :D but from the results, even though this is a small sample size, i’ve found something interesting.

“you” is typically used in formal and informal contexts, to refer to single or multiple people. hardly any surprise there, though some people did say they wouldn’t use it in an informal context.

but “u.” only 1 out of 12 respondents said they would use it to refer to multiple people!! so, i don’t have a significant amount of data points, but it seems that ENGLISH IS REMAKING THE SINGULAR YOU. HOW ABOUT THAT???

also, i’ll have to do a followup survey with more specific questions, but it seems to me that “you” can be used as a formal singular or plural, or as an informal plural. basically, the same as “vous” in french. THIS IS AWESOME

[tangleofrainbows]

re: how teens and adults text, I would be super interested for you to explain your theory!

ok SO. a lot of this comes from various stuff i’ve seen on the linguistics of tumblr, but at the heart of it is that people in my generation (at least in the us; idk abt other countries’ timelines on this front) went thru (or are still going thru) our Formative Social Years in an environment where we’d regularly interact with even our closest friends on text-only platforms (whether texting or gchat or fb messages or w/e), and b/c so much linguistic/social information is actually conveyed by facial expression and tone of voice, we’ve collectively made up all of these textual ways of conveying that in a concise, efficient way

so like, sometimes on this blog i’ll talk about “straight people”, and sometimes i’ll talk about “str8 ppl”, and even tho i would pronounce those the same, the first is much more neutral — it would probably happen in the context like “i’m not sure how i feel about straight people writing stories that center around experiences of homophobia” — than the second, which which is much more frustrated/venting — it would be more likely to crop up in the context of “all i want is to live quietly in my little queer utopia but no str8 ppl have to come along and heteronomativity UGH #over it #whatever #NOT RLLY OVER IT”. or even with more subtle things like end punctuation: “i’m not going” basically just means i’m not currently planning to go to the thing; “i’m not going.” carries much more of a connotation of “i have seriously considered going and have Reasons for staying at home” (and note that capital — “i have Reasons for staying at home” feels different than “i have reasons for staying at home”). (and this isn’t even getting into things like shitposting or advanced memeology, but there are specific textual markers that go with things like that, some of which would be pronounced if you read them aloud, but many of which wouldn’t be)

but, crucially, for these kinds of things to carry meaning, they have to be used consistently: if i use “str8 ppl” and “straight people” interchangeably in all contexts (as i do for something like “the supreme court” vs “scotus”), then there’s no way to develop a distinction in meaning between the two — the only way to do that is to consistently use the different orthographies in different contexts. (to take another example: if something is “great”, then it’s solidly good. if something is “gr8”, it’s more in the land of “i can’t quite believe this is as earnest/tacky/tasteless as it is but i’m weirdly into it anyway?” (sometimes with a side helping of “do i just enjoy this ironically or do i genuinely enjoy it there is no way of knowing please send help”))

the upshot of this is that to be fluent in tumblr (or texting, or fb messenger, or w/e) means to actually be paying a lot of attention to subtle points of grammar and spelling, to know when to use “did u kno” or “ur” or even pull out an old-fashioned tip of the hat to “e733T haxxor 5killz”. most of these are very subtle distinctions, the kind of things you feel intuitively rather than write out explicitly, and so it’s very hard to convey them concisely and accurately to someone who’s not already immersed in the linguistic environment

and let’s be real, people in my parents’ generation aren’t. i mean, sure, many of them have facebook accounts, but these kinds of platforms weren’t around when they were in their “really getting to grips with social interaction” years, and their most important social interactions usually don’t take place exclusively online. for me, all of my closest friends are people i’ve only interacted with online for more than a year now (with a few brief face-to-face visits when various travel arrangements have allowed), so tumblr, facebook, and gchat are absolutely critical to my social life and interpersonal interactions; for my parents, their closest friends are people they see in person at work every day, so social media is a light overlay to their social lives, not the thrumming core

as such, my parents don’t grok these distinctions. to them “what are you doing?” means the same thing as “lol wut r u doing”; “gr8” is just like “great” (and “gr9” takes some parsing … ); dogespeak doesn’t have the same distinctive valence that it does to us. since they don’t know about these distinctions, they don’t feel the need to maintain more “proper” spelling/grammar when texting with a friend — different people have different set points for this, obvs, but in general i feel like “standard (setting aside all the class and racial implications in that term …) spelling and grammar” (with lighter-than-standard punctuation and capitalization) translates to “relatively neutral/pleasant conversational voice”, and then deliberate misspellings, abbreviations, letter substitutions, and grammar deviations are markers used to indicate shifts in mood — i have a vague sense that bitterness tends to collapse down and preserve grammar but weird spelling (“lyk w/e im happy 4 u but pls, i kno u lied 2 get that”) whereas enthusiasm tends to preserve spelling but weird grammar (“what i can’t even no how do air AMAZE”). since people in my parents’ generation don’t realize that doing so unintentionally changes the way their words come across, they feel free to text “poorly” (ie with lots of errors/substitutions, generally mixing various text-flagged vocal tones in ways that are often incoherent) in order to do so more quickly (b/c lbr typing everything out can be a pain (esp on a non-smartphone), and since parents don’t do it as much, they’re not necessarily as fast as our spry young fingers on a familiar interface)

so yeah, that’s what i suspect is going on

tl;dr: parents don’t use orthography to mark vocal tone in the way youngfolk do, and thus feel free to condense their texts and otherwise use textspeak. youngfolk are using orthography to mark for tone, and thus text more “correctly” to preserve their social intentions

[kingofthewilderwest]

Shipping Names and Linguistics

I’ve always found enormous entertainment in how pairing names are formed. As a linguist who has apparently lived too long in academics, I’ve wanted to study shipping in depth. I vaguely remember seeing formal scholarship on the linguistics of shipping names, but today I just decided to study pairing names myself and try to determine if there’s a linguistic system to how they’re adopted. It can’t just be random how we come up with these names, can it?

After screwing around for about a day reading over three hundred shipping names from a few fandom communities (not all of which I’m a part), I think I’ve come to the hypothesis we subconsciously create shipping names according to a list of optimal rules. These rules put constraints on what the pairing can be named. The best shipping name, and the one that typically becomes adopted, is one that tries to break the fewest amounts of constraints.

Now these constraints are ordered in terms of importance. It’s worse to break constraints at the top of the list. Constraints at the bottom of the list are more likely to be broken. And if constraints are broken, it will usually be because a higher-ranked constraint overrides the other conflicting constraint (don’t worry I’ll give examples so that this hopefully makes more sense).

These are the constraints I think apply to shipping name paradigms (and yes, I just made those names up):

1. Distinctiveness Principle. The most recognizable part of each characters’ names are used in the combined shipping name. Both names should be taken into account so that both names are as distinctly noticeable as possible. This allows fanse to quickly tell who the two people in the pairing are. For example, the pairing between Snotlout and Ruffnut in How to Train Your Dragon cannot be called “Snotnut” because there’s another character - Tuffnut - whose last name ends in “nut.” “Snotnut” is not distinct and clear. “Ruff” is the clearest part of Ruffnut’s name, so the ship name is “Rufflout.” 2. Two Letter Rule. Each person in the pairing should have at least two unaltered letters (not always sounds) from their name. One letter is not distinct enough to tell who the character is being shipped. 3. First and Second Parts. The first name in the pairing will use the start of the person’s name. The second name in the pairing will use the end of the person’s name. For instance, in “Clintasha,” the pairing between Clinton Barton and Natasha Romanoff, the first name is Clinton. So the first half of his name is used - Clint. But we use the end of Natasha’s name because she’s the second half of the ship. You would violate this rule if you named the ship “Clintnat.” (Of course there are some violations of this rule, like “Edwin” for Ed+Winry, etc). 4. Most Common Names. If the characters are known by their first names, then their first names will be used to make the shipping name. If the characters are always called by their surnames, or their first names are not distinctive enough (hence violating principle #2), surnames may be used. Whenever Rapunzel is shipped, her first name (usually with the suffix “-unzel”) is used. Her last name Corona never enters the picture because people don’t widely know or think about her last name. Lastly, if one name is a first name in the ship name, the other will very likely be a first name; if one name is a last name, so will the other be, too.

5. Name Combination Paradigms. Names are combined in different ways in a pairing. The ones from most optimal to least optimal are:

Syllable Fusion. Two syllables are overlapped. If characters have some common vowels and consonants in their names, that is where the pairing name “split” happens. For instance, in “Elsanna,” the name Elsa ends with an “a” and Anna begins with an “a.” Since both names share this vowel, it becomes a natural joint to combine their two names. “Mericup,” the ship for Merida and Hiccup, is another example. Like-vowel combinations seem very preferred, though like-consonants occur, too.

Consonant Similarities. Sometimes consonants aren’t exactly the same, but they’re very similar and become used as the joint. For instance, in the ship between Dagur and Hiccup, the “g” and “c” (actually “k”) sounds are very similar. The only difference between the pronunciation of these two sounds is that you use your vocal chords on the “g.” So it becomes a nice place to join the two names. Other alternated sounds include “b” and “p, “t” and “d,” and “z” and “s.” Suffice it to say that these sounds are produced in very similar ways in the mouth and have similar acoustic features.

Syllable Split. In this type of a ship name formation, each characters’ names are chunked by syllables. They don’t have any sound overlaps, but the two syllables bump up next to each other. The ship between Thor and Natasha, “Thortasha,” is an example of this. There is no overlap between “Thor” and “Tasha,” but each chunk starts with a syllable from the original names.

Complex Syllable Avoidance. This isn’t a big rule, but sometimes the syllable isn’t so neatly split. Sometimes you’d have to throw a lot of consonants all together. A syllable may not be split completely correctly to make for smoother pronunciation. For instance, “Dashellope” is the ship between Dash Parr and Vanellope. Technically the start of the second syllable in Vanellope’s name is “nel.” Bu “Dashnellope” isn’t as smooth to say. In a similar way, diphthongs (complex vowels which combine multiple vowel sounds) are sometimes avoided.

6. “Hierarchy” Listing Principle. This one shocked me and I wasn’t expecting it. I would really, really need to study this in depth to make sure this is a Real, True Thing, especially since it could have some cumbersome sociolinguistic consequences. But from my limited data set and casual observations, it seems like there tends to be an order of who’s listed first in the shipping.

Male, then Female. Men are usually listed before women in a heterosexual ship. I’m only saying this because I have concrete data for this observation. This is just an observation and nothing else. In the 143 heterosexual ships I looked at, 92 had the men listed first, 51 for the women. That’s a stark 2:1 ratio. I tried to guess why sometimes women go first, and it seems that women are very likely to be put first when there’s a break in another rule, such as trying to maximize distinctiveness, or to create a really awesome syllable fusion like “Meridashi” (Tadashi and Merida).

Bigger Person. The older individual, taller, well-known, or more authoritative character is somewhat frequently listed first in the relationship, especially for homosexual pairings. Again, this is observation I am stating about ship names and an observation alone. Qualified sociolinguists and sociologists could have some things to say about this, but I’m not qualified to study why this occurs.

Note I’m putting the word “hierarchy” in quotations because it’s not truly a measure of character dominance or power. I don’t want to imply that. I’m just saying there’s a hierarchy of certain traits that somehow seem to implicitly decide what name is going first. The character with the most of these traits is likely to be listed first. If I had a better word in my head for what to call this, I’d totally change it.

7. Elegance. A shipping name should sound smooth on the tongue. It’s optimally short - usually two or three syllables - and it does not have any hint of vulgarity implied in the pairing name (hence why Hiccup and Astrid’s pairing is called “Hiccstrid” rather than “Ascup”). This is the least important shipping name and it’s largely up for interpretation of what is “elegant.”

And those are the rules I’ve figured out, in order from most important to least important (maybe… I haven’t run tests or anything to validate they’re in the right order). To list them off more succinctly, they are:

1. Distinctiveness Principle. 2. Two Letter Rule. 3. First and Second Parts. 4. Most Common Names. 5. Name Combination Paradigms (Syllable Fusion, Consonant Similarities, Syllable Split, Complex Syllable Avoidance). 6. “Hierarchy” Listing Principle (gender, age, leadership role, height, etc.). 7. Elegance. 

Remember me saying that the most important principles typically override the less important principles? Let’s say, for example, that there would be a direct conflict between principles #6 and #1. Then rule #6 would be broken to favor #1. I’m going to use the example of the ship between Ruffnut and Fishlegs. We can either put Ruffnut’s name first and call the ship “Rufflegs,” thus breaking rule #6 about men being listed first, or we can put Fishlegs’ name first and have the pairing be “Fishnut.” But then we’d be breaking rule #1 since Ruffnut has a brother named Tuffnut, and we’re not being very distinct. Because #1 is more important, the ship is ultimately “Rufflegs” rather than “Fishnut.”

In fact, I’m going to go so far as to say that the first rule is *Essential* in a shipping name. If the first rule is broken, then it doesn’t matter how many other rules the ship name is possible. It’s out. All other rules have a little more leeway, and you might see some lower principles being favored over higher ones on occasion.

I mean, what on earth would “Shon” be? Can you guys figure out who I’m talking about? It’s a lot more understandable if I say “Johnlock.” The “Jo” - if not all of “John” - has to be in there to understand the ship name to be distinct.

Similarly, “Casean” isn’t quite as distinct as “Destiel” since “-tiel” is a highly unusual part of a name. And the “sean” sort of looks like “Sean,” which is pronounced very differently than what speakers would want to convey. So “Destiel” is better.

Here’s some more names in action: Destiel (Dean and Castiel, Supernatural), Hiccstrid (Hiccup and Astrid, How to Train Your Dragon), Johnlock (John and Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock), Stucky (Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, Marvel), Bagginshield (Thorin Oakenshield and Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit), Thorsif (Thor and Sif, Marvel), and Jackunzel (Jack Frost and Rapunzel Corona, ROTBTD).

“Destiel” is basically a golden case scenario where everything is fulfilled. 

“Hiccstrid” is, too. It can’t be “Ascup” because that’s vulgar and that’d infringe upon the idea of Elegance. The “ccstr” is a lot of consonants all clumped together, but “-strid” is what makes Astrid’s last name distinct. 

“Johnlock” has one minor infringement. Sherlock is sort of the leader in the duo as far as mystery solving is going. He’s arguably the lead character in the show. So why is Sherlock listed second? Because you really can’t have the name “John” split in two going last. What would you say instead? “Shock?” “Sherson?” “Sherwatson?” All of those are much more problematic than “Johnlock,” so “Johnlock” it is.

“Stucky” is sliiiiiiightly distinct and slightly follows the first principle. But it’s an interesting example because it’s not perfect at all, and there would be other alternatives that are more distinct. “St” at the start of a name isn’t the biggest clue in the world, after all.

“Bagginshield” violates the principle of common names in a way. Usually we call the characters “Bilbo” and “Thorin.” But Thorin’s first name is downright problematic. The first syllable “Thor” is obnoxiously obscure. Are you talking about Thor the Norse god? Who? So his last name is used. And because his last name is used, it gets paired up with Bilbo’s last name. “Oaken” and “shield” are probably equally distinct, so the deciding factor is the fact that “s” and “sh” are very similar sounds and make a far, far better joint together than “Bagginsoaken” or “Bagginsoak” would be. There’s also the matter of Elegance to be considered here. “Bagginsoaken” is an unwieldy four syllable beast.

“Thorsif” is interesting because “Sifthor” would literally be just as distinct and fulfill all the rules. Except it’s the slight tendency for us to mention a man’s name first in pairing names.

“Jackunzel” is another example where we don’t have the syllables split perfectly. Technically that would be “Jackpunzel.”

Now there are some other cool things that I’ve observed from looking at shipping names.

Fandoms essentially code and create their own prefixes and suffixes over time. Whenever that affix occurs, they know that character is in the ship. Examples of that include “-ler” for Once-ler, “-unzel” for Rapunzel, “-strid” for Astrid, “-vis” for Mavis, “Mega-” for Megamind, and “Meri-” for “Merida. People are essentially systematizing information over time by picking up on what other people have done and linguistically conforming as a group. It’s so cool.

Some fandoms have started this crazy process of metaphor and creating ship titles not from names, but from these metaphorical associations. I have seen this in the Marvel fandom, ROTBTD, and Inside Out fandom. The ship between Pitch Black and Toothiana from Rise of the Guardians has been called Cavity because black items in a tooth make a cavity. That is CRAZY language manipulation! And that’s only the tip of the iceberg!

There’s even puns in this whole mess of metaphors and relations. The ship for Steve Rogers and Tony Stark has been called “STARK AND STRIPES,” and I’ve seen “CLAIREDEVIL” refer to Claire Temple and Matt Murdock (Daredevil). Captain America is about American patriotism - so we get the association of “Stars and Stripes” - and then we insert in a pun with Tony’s name. The same thing happens with Matt Murdock, who is Daredevil, when he’s shipped with Claire.

So shipping names, and how they’re developed, is downright cool. There’s a lot of crazy language work going out there and I think I could rattle on even more. Maybe someday I’ll formally study this and write an academic paper on the topic.

Which brings me to this very important point… 

Last but not least:

THIS IS NOT AN ACTUAL RESEARCH PAPER AND THIS DATA IS NOT CONFIRMED WHATSOEVER. I REPEAT: THIS IS NOT RESEARCH AND SHOULD NOT BE TREATED AS FACT.

These are literally just my casual, informal observations after playing around a day. So don’t quote me on this! It may be true. It might not. In fact, I already know there are exceptions to my ideas (”Jelsa” is problematic, just to give one example). This isn’t robust research, it’s got its holes, it’s got its guesses, and I’d know how to dismantle my own argument as it currently stands. It’s not rock solid right now. But I just thought I’d have fun, share some of my thoughts, and hope you have some fun with this, too. :)