We come across branded celebrity nuptials more often these
days. The branding starts with a hashtaged name blending of the couple. The first time I
came across this trend was when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie decided to live happily
ever after and the world called them Brangelina!!! Though now the brand is
hyphenated. Then came our Bollywood friends aping their Hollywood cousins and
the first on the list was Virushka which was an amalgamation of the names of celebrities
from two religions in India Bollywood and Cricket!
Initially I was impressed at their creativity only to realise
later that there were online tools like couple name generator like an anagram
generator that could churn out combined names of couples in various
permutations and combinations.
Later on I learnt from my daughter that there was a term for
this in the millennial lingo and was called ‘shipping’ or ‘ship’. You could ship two romantically linked couple
by co-joining their first or last names and flaunt it as brand. The convenience
of publicizing their union was also simple. All they needed to do was to prefix
a hashtag to their ‘shipped’ names to set sail on the sea of eternal bliss. Some
though turned a Titanic half way through.
I’m sure the Sailing fraternity, which is an otherwise boring male
dominated profession were more than happy to be romantically linked to the
union of celebrity souls in love. The ‘shipped’ hashtags started trending on
the social media sites and the numbers that followed them eclipsed the numbers
that attended their wedding.
That is when the Malayalee in me woke up? This was an art we
conceptualized generations back, We were the pioneers at combining names and our
ancestors were the ones who started this trend of naming not themselves as a couple,
but their offsprings with some lovely combination of their own names. Once they
took this a tad seriously we had some interesting names doing the rounds, the
best of which was Shitty, named after Shoshama & Ittycheria. Had the tools
like the name generator been available then, we would have had an entire
generation of Malayalees with esoteric names. Baby naming was so easy back then,
a child born to an Aleyama and Varghese could be named Arghese…Close to Nargis!.
Being born to Thomas and Gracy, had they followed the trend I could have been
named Thoracy which sounded more like an acute throat infection.
Today almost every other Bollywood celebrity couple release their
hashtaged ‘shipped’ names months before their big fat Indian weddings, that
does not happen in India any longer. But picking the right one can be tricky,
Virushka had Virat taking on a partial Anushka as the second half of the name
and sent a message to the sorority that the husbands can take their wife’s names
as surnames, then came Deepveer, now we can also argue that Ranveer let Deepika
take the lead…the latest couple on the block is Nickiyanka which was a
Transcontinental shipping liner altogether. The American with a small name
managed to fit in his entire name into the equation though it sounds like the
name of a Russian Gymnast.
Soon to be released is Hashtag AliaRan! Could well be the ‘shipped’
term for Aliya & Ranbir. Not sure if it sounds right though!
Wishing all the ‘ships’ and those ‘shipped’ a wonderful voyage
irrespective of the tides and the icebergs they may encounter and make sure the
hyphen does not split their brand.
