Portmantitle

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

When people who need a title for a show that sounds original, but still somewhat familiar, they often take two (or more) common words and either:

A: Make a Portmanteau of them or
B: Just remove the space between them. This is particularly popular in music.

In the future, these are very common. When we use one, it's a Tropemanteau. Japanese does this a lot when borrowing from English, actually.

Has nothing to do with films starring Natalie Portman.

Examples of Portmantitle include:

Portmanteaus

Anime and Manga

Film

Literature

Live Action TV

Music

  • Chiodos' third album, Illuminaudio (illumination + audio - not to be confused for anything to do with the Illuminati).
  • The Mars Volta's album Amputechture is a portmanteau of "amputation", "technology" and "architecture".
  • WASP album Helldorado (Hell + El Dorado).
    • Also the song "Revengeance" (revenge + vengeace) on Dying for the World.
  • Michael Jackson compilation HIStory (his story + history).
  • Overkill albums Horrorscope (horror + horoscope), Coverkill (cover + overkill) and ReliXIV (relics + XIV).
    • Also the song "Soulitue" (soul + solitude).
  • U.D.O. album Mastercutor (master + executor).
  • The band Helloween (Hell + Halloween).
  • Megadeth album Youthanasia (youth + euthanasia).
  • Heavens Gate album Menergy (me + energy).
  • Ozzy Osbourne album Ozzmosis (Ozzy + osmosis).
  • Savatage formed their name by compining their previous name Avatar with the word savage.
  • Used partly in the title of King's-Evil album Deletion of Humanoise (human + noise).
  • Lordi's third album The Arockalypse (apocalypse + rock).
  • Sepultura EP Revolusongs (revolution + songs).
  • Skindred (skin + kindred).
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic's Alpocalypse (Al + apocalypse)
  • Digitalism

New Media

Toys

Video Games

  • The Combatribes = "Combat Tribe"
  • Pokémon was originally the series' nickname in Japan, where it is known as Pocket Monsters. It was adapted as the official overseas title in order to avoid infringement on the Monsters In My Pocket toyline.
  • Policenauts = "Police" and "Astronauts", although in this case "naut" is a legitimate suffix for an explorer, since there are also Aquanauts and Aeronauts.
  • Probotector = "Robot Protector" (Probotector being the European version of the earlier Contra games on home consoles)
  • The Nintendo Entertainment System is officially known as the Family Computer in Japan, but is commonly referred by its abbreviated name of Famicom, a name Nintendo officially adopted for its successor, the Super Famicom.
  • Psychonauts, which is actually a real word.
  • OneChanbara = one-chan ("big sis", or "young woman") and chanbara (sword fighting)
  • Recettear and Chantelise are both combinations of the names of two primary characters, Recette + Tear in the former and Chante + Elise in the latter.
  • Runark (Japanese title of Growl) = "Rune" and "Ark"
  • Terranigma = "Terra" and "enigma"
  • Slydris: Slide + Tetris, with a dash of Xtreme Kool Letterz.

Real Life

  • Plenty of major American corporations have named (or renamed) themselves like this in order to look more "interesting" or "modern:" Verizon, Citigroup, and Microsoft are just a few examples.
    • Initializing and syllabizing corporate names became a popular trend in the 1950s and '60s. Instead of being known clumsily and stuffily as the National Biscuit Company, you could modernize and rebrand yourself as Nabisco, complete with a newly revised logo and matching modern font.
    • It's not just American companies either. British businessman Sir Alan Sugar's company is called Amstrad, which comes from his initials, 'Alan Michael Sugar' and 'trading'.
  • The Japanese language does this a lot, especially to loanwords. For instance, word processor becomes waapuro.
    • They do this because the language is syllable-based rather than letter-based - a portmanteau is the closest you can get to an acronym.
  • Urban planners seem to like these. "Metrorail, BosWash, and "Suburbanization," for example.
  • This was also quite popular in Russia, such as the Komintern (for the Communist International).
  • The online event NaNoWriMo, for National Novel Writing Month.
  • Sitcom, Britcom, and so on.

Space Removal

Anime and Manga

  • Dragon Ball is sometimes spelled as Dragonball
  • Fans often remove the space in Death Note, because there's no discernible space in the logo. As the label on the artifact itself will show, this is a mistake.

Film

Video Games

Music

  • Radiohead
  • Squarepusher
  • Soundgarden
  • Audioslave
  • MuteMath
  • MeltBanana
  • Inverted by Sigur Ros, which was named after a band members' younger sister: "Sigurros"
  • Pitchshifter
  • The Spacemonkeys
  • HelloGoodbye
  • Deadmau5
  • Self's song "ILoveToLoveYourLoveMyLove"

New Media

Western Animation

  1. ↑ thus giving us "Jūranger"
  2. ↑ The title is also a roundabout reference to [[Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (novel)|]] (Hari Pota to Kenja no Ishi).
  3. ↑ i.e., Jumperson
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