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Is there a word that describes a person whose given name and surname each contains but a single syllable?

Some examples are:

  • Mae West
  • Bill Fold
  • John Doe
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  • Who's is a typo, should have been whose.
    – Jim
    Commented Nov 25, 2013 at 23:59
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    I suppose you could always just call them disyllabic. (Or, if you want to get really fancy and just start making up fancy-sounding words, disyllabonymic.)
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 0:11
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    Brings to mind Asimov's phrase (in Fantastic Voyage) of "...the monosyllabic grunt of Grant."
    – Gnawme
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 0:28
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    If you treat the whole name in terms of metrical feet, Mae West is a spondee, and John Paul Jones is a molossus.
    – Sven Yargs
    Commented Nov 28, 2013 at 1:48
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    If you’re into ethnic profiling, you could just call them Chinese.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Dec 26, 2013 at 1:04

1 Answer 1

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The best I can think of is to say that their names are disyllabic duonyms, making them disyllabic-duonymic.

Such an answer though is in the realm of fun word games with obscure terms, rather than anything of much use in real English use. Don't say anyone is disyllabic-duonymic, except perhaps as a joke, aimed at a rather nerdy audience.

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  • Oho! Even better than my disyllabonymic: disyllaboduonymic! :-D
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 0:12
  • @JanusBahsJacquet well, at least duonym is attested, though more often of compound words than personal names, and I see you also hit on disyllabic, which isn't even being forced into unusual service as it goes. And that's about as much as I can say to justify either of us!
    – Jon Hanna
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 0:15
  • @JanusBahsJacquet One night also consider using the perfectly well-attested binomial here instead of duonym. Think for example of taxonomic binomials, which are big-endian genus–species pairings of names. In contrast, John Wayne would be a little-endian binomial. I dunno, I might try going for the at-first-glance-contradictory monosyllabic binomials myself.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Dec 26, 2013 at 2:49
  • @tchrist though binomial is particularly associated with Latin binomial naming conventions. Thus recommending against unless it matches well.
    – Jon Hanna
    Commented Dec 27, 2013 at 0:09

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