What to Call Unmarried Couples?

There was a recent article in the New York Times that asks the question: “What to call two people who act as if they are married but are not?” As a writer, I find this to be a non-frivolous line of inquiry. While some of the conventions of our society have changed, our language has been a little slow keeping up. Since I’m hardly shy about my willingness to try out new word usages (witness my never-ending push for a genderless pronoun class), I thought I’d have a bash.

Married couples obviously offer us the easy cases of husband/wife (or wife/husband, if you prefer), husband/husband, and wife/wife. You go to a party and introduce your spouse as your husband|wife. Easy-peasy. But what if you are a couple living together, or in a common law marriage, or separate-homes-but-long-term? What then? Is your emotional commitment any less for lack of overt government or religious sanction?

In recent times, the most common appellation has been “partner” for both the mixed- and same-sex communities. Unfortunately, when you are introducing your business partner, or tennis doubles partner, you now have to engage in the same sort of silliness as differentiating boyfriend/girlfriend from boy friend/girl friend (another linguistic landmine we need to work on). The article mentions other such things as: “significant other”, “fusband”, “mi hombre”, and the government’s “POSSLQ” (possle-cue). “Inamorata” was once also on the table (so to speak).

What to do? The words need to not be easily confused with other words in common use. They need to be non-clinical sounding — there is emotion there, so if possible it should be suggested (i.e. the lyrically sounding “lilly” is likely more in this arena than the explosive “kracken”). I think that the words can be gender indicating — though having a neutral version (or base) would be ideal. Since English is an acquisitional language, there’s no reason not to consider words used in other tongues.

I brainstormed a lot of names, some exquisitely silly. The one I thought was the best was to use is a derivative of the Latin compar, which can variously mean: match, comrade, mate, beloved, spouse, perfect match, etc. Using conventional masculine and feminine forms would give us “comparo” and “compara” along with the completely neutral foundation of “compar”. What’s even better is that even marrieds could use these terms as well — though it seems a little gouache when they already have two perfectly fine words already…although it could be useful on invitations when the sanctioned status of a couple is unknown. There is also the added benefit that if others think it’s silly, you don’t have to take the blame — it’s on me.

There we go. problem solved: comparo and compara. Now all y’all need to do is go out and use ’em. Well, go on….