In this article I demonstrate how to create and use anagrams for a wedding speech to further enhance your armoury of humour creating skills. Anagrams can be very funny and a well chosen one can go down a treat.
Anagrams are a rich lode to tap into: anagrams of the Groom's name, the Bride's name, the Bride and Groom's Christian names, the Groom's football team , the parents names, the towns where the families live, the location of the wedding (town, venue) etc are all appropriate subjects for an anagram.
There are a couple of ways that you can create them:-
The first, the hardest, is to toy with the word / phrase / name you wish to anagramise with nothing more than a piece of paper, a pen and your brain.
The other way is to use anagram-finding services on the internet, some of these are on-line others are downloadable software.
Some of the available ones are:-
If you search for "Anagrams" or "Anagram Services online" at a search engine you will find many online sources of anagrams. Some are simple to use as well as free but leave you having to search all the letter combinations to identify useful or funny ones. This can be extremely laborious, and I would recommend not being caught up with such a service, and instead using more sophisticated products.
The one which I like best is Anagram Genius, available on the link above. You can download a free version which is quite serviceable or pay 30 dollars or so for the Gold version which is excellent for our purposes. During the rest of this discussion I am referring to Anagram Genius, but the same methods work with any anagram service.
Please bear in mind that for our purposes an anagram doesn't have to be absolutely exactly correct - if it suits your comic purposes by all means change the odd letter - if done sparingly it is very unlikely that anyone will challenge you on this, even if they notice.
However you may well feel more satisfied by a completely accurate anagram. Fortunately it is possible to make some tremendously funny or appropriate anagrams. This is how I do it:-
Your first step is to list the names, ideas etc which you intend to anagramise.
To achieve useable anagrams you have to try different permutations - for instance "Mark and Anne" on its own might not give the software enough to work on, but try it first and then try Mark and Anne Smith (for example), and if you don't get anything useable from that expand it a little more, eg: Anne and Mark Smith Aston Villa fans.
Try the name of the church where the wedding is taking place, the name of the reception venue, the Bride's maiden name, etc, etc
An effective anagram program will:-
- sort the anagrams in order of %age effectiveness, ie best anagrams first
- use artificial intelligence to arrange each anagram into roughly grammatical sentences, and
- includes slang words (but be sure not to use undue coarse language!)
In other words it can do a lot of the 'donkey work' for you, by identifying the anagrams which are most likely to be useful.
So, plug in the name / phrase you wish to anagramise. But what are you looking for? Ideally a connection with a facet of the Groom's / Brides personality or personal history.
Anagram examples
Here are a couple of examples taken from speeches written for Sparkling Speech (my tailored speech-writing web service) customers.
[1]
I wrote a speech for one Best Man, whose best friend, the Groom, had, for mist-shrouded historical reasons, the nickname Dom. The Best Man was delighted when I shared with him the choice nugget that Dom's full name was an anagram of "warm old sniveller", and with my suggestion that in his speech he should propose a re-name to "Wos".
[2]
Another customer, a Groom, was a staunch member of an Elim Pentecostal Church known for their passionate singing. Anagram Genius told me that "Elim Pentecostal Church" was an anagram of "ace tonsil temple", a fact which went down a storm when he delivered his speech.
[3]
For another example, consider a Bride who makes a habit of collecting shopping coupons and is getting married at St Thomas' Church, Bournville. What could be more appropriate than to discover that she should be wooed by "voucher charms not bullshit"?
[4]
A good prospect is the Groom's / Bride's favourite sporting team. Try just the first part of the name, then if that yields nothing, add the rest of the name. For instance, try "Manchester United" and if that fails, try "Manchester United Football Club", etc
[5]
Using anagram creation software I have found that "Aston Villa Football Club" is an anagram of "full vocal slob battalion," "Manchester United " is an anagram of "dream stench unite", and "Manchester United Football Club" is an anagram of "accentuated run-of-the-mill blobs."
I have to say that it takes a little time to find anagrams like these, but I would say that if you have seven or eight names / combinations to search under, you'll probably be able to do them all in a couple of hours.
Anagram Genius has a couple of extra features, one of which is its archive collection of the very best anagrams created, arranged under headings as diverse as sport, TV and politics. It's well worth having a quick look to see if there's anything there you can use.
One example: "Manchester United footballer David Beckham" is an anagram of "Man, the bloke blundered! Fetch Victoria Adams!"
You can use anagram software to create entertaining aliases. For example, if your name happened to be Slobodan Milosevic and you were female, you might decide on an alias of Miss Cleo Viola Bond.
One final note on anagrams: don't overload your speech with them. I think the rule of three (see Bruno's Column May 2003) applies well here. Use them sparingly, no more than three and if you use more than one try to use anagrams that complement and support each other. And remember, a lot of work has been done for you in the FineSpeeches.com wedding pack: you could do much worse than buy from us.
Bruno Barton
LICENCE
This article is the copyright of FineSpeeches.com - specialists in helping wedding speakers! Visit us at www.finespeeches.com.
You may republish, copy or circulate this article for any non-commercial purpose; PROVIDED the content is not altered in any way (including the attribution, licence and contact details).
If you want to use this article commercially - such as in a newsletter which generates revenue - please contact us at email us.
