Long Live Bennifer!

It all started with Bennifer. In 2002, Ben Affleck, then 30, and Jennifer Lopez, then 33, got together on the set of the ultimately ill-fated mobster rom-com Gigli and quickly became one of the most talked-about celebrity couples on the planet. At first, the tabloids referred to them as Ben and Jen, Affleck and J. Lo, “the lovebirds,” and so on. But when filming their second, also ill-fated movie Jersey Girl together, director Kevin Smith says he started calling them “Bennifer.” He then used the portmanteau in a 2003 New York Times interview promoting the film, and suddenly, it was everywhere. (While it’s impossible to state exactly how such a force entered the lexicon, so far no one has come forward to sue Smith for copyright.)

“Bennifer” was so snappy and marketable that tabloid editors began trying to come up with special monikers for all the major couples of the day. When Tom Cruise jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch to celebrate his love for Katie Holmes in 2005, he and his beloved became TomKat. That same year, when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were photographed walking on a beach in Kenya just one month after Pitt separated from Jennifer Aniston, they were dubbed Brangelina.

Of course, neither of those couples is still together: TomKat divorced in 2012 and Brangelina split in 2016; Bennifer Round 1 didn’t even make it past 2004. Their couple names, however, endure: Even though Pitt and Jolie are in the bitter process of divvying up Chateau Miraval, the allure of “Brangelina” lives on.

But not every celebrity couple’s nickname has stuck. In the mid-2000s, tabloid editors and burgeoning celebrity gossip bloggers attempted to blend two names together every time two stars were photographed together at the grocery store, hoping (but often failing) to recreate that bestselling Bennifer magic. There was Robsten (Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart), Jelena (Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez), and Zanessa (Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens). Even reality stars got the A-list tabloid treatment: Survivor contestants Rob Mariano and Amber Brkich fell in love and became Romber, and The Hills stars Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag teamed up and became, quite memorably, Speidi. Funnily enough, only the latter two marriages have stood the test of time: The celebrity couple moniker rarely augurs long-term romantic success.

Not every major Hollywood couple gets a name, however. Beyoncé and Jay Z have retained their individual brands as Bey and Jay, as have several other A-list couples, including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, and Leo DiCaprio and every 20-year-old he has dated over the last decade. Sometimes, the proposed amalgamation just doesn’t sound right: Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore were one of the most-discussed celebrity pairings when they got together in 2003, but “Ashmi” never took off. Kutcher reasoned at the time that their names were simply not meant to be merged: “It works better if one person has a monosyllabic name,” he told Conan O’Brien. (He went on to marry Mila Kunis, and true to his theory, no one is calling them “Ashla,” either. Or Mishton. Milton?)

It wasn’t until Kim Kardashian and Kanye West started dating in 2012 that another celebrity couple name challenged the supremacy of Bennifer and Brangelina. Like its predecessors, “Kimye” was suddenly everywhere, perhaps owing to the fact that both Kardashian and West were already tabloid-famous for different reasons. That their first names blended so seamlessly together didn’t hurt, either. The moniker is still in heavy circulation today, even though Kardashian and West are in the midst of a divorce. (West’s short-lived paramour Julia Fox attempted to get “Juliye” trending while the two were dating for a few days in February, but that went nowhere. Meanwhile, Kardashian and her new boyfriend, Pete Davidson, could technically be called Kete, but the name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.)

In the end, the most enduring couple name is the original: Bennifer. There’s just no way to improve upon it. When Affleck and Lopez reunited in the spring of 2021, some of the tabloids dithered about what to call them: Bennifer 2.0? No, that was Affleck and Garner. Bennifer 1.1? Technically correct, but not exactly catchy. Almost a year on, it seems we have landed again on Kevin Smith’s (alleged) masterpiece. It just sounds right.