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Surely the act of abbreviating an anime title to three syllables has a
name...? And what is that name?

Full Name | Shortened  
---|---  
_Kodomo no Omocha_ | Kodocha  
_Jungle wa Itsumo Hare nochi Guu_ | Hareguu  
_Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai_ | Oreimo  
_Fruits Basket_ | Furuba  
_Japanese Animation_ | Anime


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2015-10-31T12:13:09.560
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question
japanese-language terminology
Is there a name for the abbreviated (usually three-syllable) title?


The name for the abbreviated word resulting from the combination is a
[Portmanteau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau)

> A portmanteau is linguistic blend of words in which parts of multiple words,
> or their phones (sounds), and their meaning are combined into a new word.

A very common type of portmanteau that is used within the Japanese language is
forming one word from the beginnings of 2 other words.

> A Sino-Japanese example is the name 東大 (Tōdai) for the University of Tokyo,
> in full 東京大学 (Tōkyō daigaku). With borrowings, typical results are words
> such as パソコン (pasokon), meaning personal computer (PC), which despite being
> formed of English elements does not exist in English; it is a uniquely
> Japanese contraction of the English personal computer (パーソナル・コンピュータ pāsonaru
> konpyūta?). Another example, Pokémon (ポケモン?), is a contracted form of the
> English words pocket (ポケット poketto?) and monsters (モンスター monsutā?). A famous
> example of a blend with mixed sources is karaoke (カラオケ karaoke?), blending
> the Japanese word for empty (空 kara?) and the English word orchestra (オーケストラ
> ōkesutora?). - [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau#Japanese)

As for the act of abbreviating, it is sometimes revered to as [linguistic word
blending](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blend_word) or word contracting and
more commonly known as
[abbreviating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviation). The amount of
syllables has no effect on the terminology used to describe this act.


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For what it's worth, in Japanese, you would call this particular sort of
abbreviation a 略称 _ryakushou_ or 略語 _ryakugo_ , both of which basically just
mean "abbreviation". There isn't an anime-specific term for this sort of thing
or anything.

I should mention that abbreviated names of anime are more commonly four
syllables than three-syllables, at least in recent years. "Hareguu" is Ha-re-
gu-u (actually, these are
[morae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_\(Japanese_prosody\)) rather than
syllables, which is why this may not be obvious if you're unfamiliar with
Japanese); "Oreimo" is O-re-i-mo; and _Fruits Basket_ is frequently "Furubasu"
Fu-ru-ba-su in Japanese. There is a nice table of these [on
Nicopedia](http://dic.nicovideo.jp/a/%E3%82%A2%E3%83%8B%E3%83%A1%E3%82%BF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88%E3%83%AB%E3%81%AE4%E6%96%87%E5%AD%97%E7%95%A5%E7%A7%B0%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7)
(JP).

As a side point of interest, [this blog](http://aniotakaigi.com/) (JP)
collates abbreviated names for anime of recent seasons - for example, 2015
[winter](http://aniotakaigi.com/2015-winter/anime5w/326/),
[spring](http://aniotakaigi.com/2015-spring/anime5s/1494/),
[summer](http://aniotakaigi.com/2015-summer/anime5su/2105/), and
[fall](http://aniotakaigi.com/2015-fall/anime5f/5400/). (Obviously, machine
translation is going to fail spectacularly for this sort of thing, so this is
only relevant if you can read some Japanese.)


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