Portmanteau
From Fan History Wiki
[edit] Introduction
A portmanteau is created by combining other words or parts of other words. This new word generally has a combined or loaded meaning. In fandom, fans created names for their ships by smushing the characters names together.
[edit] Examples
The Digimon, Torchwood, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Final Fantasy, Harry Potter, and X-Files fandoms are notorious for couple portmanteaus, but many other fandoms use this device. Occasionally, fen will use the position of the characters' names to signify the characters' roles in the couple, that is, the character whose name comes first will be dominant (or the seme, in anime fandoms), while the character whose name comes last will be submissive (or the uke).
