Lesson #3, Phonetic Puns, Homonyms, You Name It!

Probably the staple crop of all corny pun threads, all pun battles, is what I call the "phonetic" pun. Using a word's sound to form a second meaning.

For example the infamous chemistry thread that begins with "What do we do with dead chemists? Barium" The beauty of this kind of pun is its simplicity. You don't ever need the "meaning" of the actual word "barium," just its phonetic sound. My friend Kevin and I once battled for 30 minutes using puns of country names.

I use this technique consistently to make puns with people's names (which don't have definitions). Here's the breakdown of some basic techniques I've used.

1. Get the name, the word of interest, you want to use to make a pun.
2. Say it to yourself, ignoring the meaning, 5-10 times. (more if needed).
3. While saying it to yourself, try to jog your memory and think of words that sound like the name or may contain the sound of the name.
4. Weave a concise phrase around the second meaning that you just made. Using idioms helps bridge the understanding gap and ensure delivery of the pun.

 I'll demonstrate with "Evan" (Who occasionally posts as Vincent O'Hara II on the blog).

-Evan..Evan...Evan..."Evan-ge." "If you slay me in a battle of wits, my dear friend will surely Evan-ge me!"

-Evan...Evan....Evan..."Heaven" "If you manage to slay my friend too, i'm sure he'll soon arrive at the gates of "Evan" because he's a firm believer in "Evangelicalism"

5. Now the longer the name, the more foreign the name (indian names omg), the harder the pun making becomes. Very frequently, you've got to cut the word up, usually in two pieces. The first half of the word will be the first word, or the END of the first word. The second half of the word will become the second word, or the BEGINNING of the second word. With my friend "Ashish," I cut his name into "Ash" and ish." Using "Ash," I thought of "Ash" "Cash" and "Bash." With "ish," I only thought of "issue." Combining the thought process I came up with "Cash Issue" = "C-Ashih-use." All that's left is to weave a phrase. Try cutting the word up differently if you're stuck. I could have cut it up into "A" and "shish" and made the pun "A shish-kebab."

That's it! Those are the basics of how to make puns with people's names. This used to be one of my trademark tricks, but now the secret is out!


Thanks for reading!

Louis Cai



~Related Warning~
I have heard every possible pun made with my name**. Don't even try.


**Probably the best one ever made was made by my friend Camille: "B-Louis Cai"