Who doesn’t love Yoda? But a baby Yoda? It’s all the rage traveling at light speed amongst Star Wars fans. The newly release TV program, The Mandalorian, recently aired a Yoda species as a baby (at age 50). It has sent everyone playing with English diminutive suffixes. While fans have adamantly stated it is not the actual Yoda character we know and love from the Star Wars films because he died in the second trilogy, it has given rise to what this little guy should be called.

Speculated names of baby yoda sparked across the internet – yodling, yodel, and yodkin, and the like. I’ll share more in a moment, but want to point out what these fans, these English speakers, are doing is attempting to add a diminutive suffix to <yoda>. A diminutive suffix is a suffix that is added form a new word to indicate the sense of something small, smaller, or young. It may also denote cuteness, endearment, or an offspring. It has been argued by some linguists that English does not have diminutive suffixes. Perhaps it is a lexical particle instead. English does not have one default diminutive suffix, but the attempts to find a name for baby yoda show us English indeed does have endings that English speakers deem as diminutive. My point here is to show the extent of diminutive elements we do see in English.

Yodling is by far become the most common attempt at creating a diminutive. One of the difficulties of adding a diminutive to <yoda> is that <yoda> is ends with an <a>. The created words circling are using <yod(e)> as the base to denote this green species. Lucas intentionally has left Yoda’s background, including the species name, a mystery, which has also lead to this word conjecturing. From goose to gosling, we see a base change, but of a different sort. One of the difficulties with <yodling> is that some are confusing it with yodeling, the act of singing. An <-el> and <-le> can have diminutive force in a few English words, such as <sparkle>. We couldn’t use <yodel-> yode/+el> as <yodel> is a word that already exists and <yodle> would just be a homophone or may be mistakeningly pronounced with a short <o>. Would the pronunciation shift and rhyme with <gosling>? Yet, spellings of <yoadling> or <yowdling> don’t connect the meaning of the word, the creature, Yoda. So those spellings would not be chosen.

Yodlet has also be suggested. Similar to a chicklet or a hamlet, being a small chicken or a little home. Sometimes the <-et> diminutive is used in words such as <packet> or <snippet>. But, <yodet> has not been in the running with fans. Perhaps because it is rarely used with living things. Of course, we could use the French diminutive <yodette> but there is an implication of feminineness there. While sources are suggesting that baby yoda is female, a future male baby yoda may not fit then species identification well. Additionally, there is the <-ule> diminutive…<yodule> which sounds a little more menacing than cute. An obscure diminutive is <-ole> to make <yodole>.

Sometimes in English we borrow diminutives from other languages. With the Italian influence diminutive, we would get <yodini>. Spanish has several diminutives with the most common being <ito> that we see in <burrito> we could add <yodito>. Or another Spanish diminutive <-illo> would leave us with <yodillo>. Those unfamiliar with Spanish may pronounce this as /yoʊdɪloʊ/ instead of /yoʊdɪjoʊ/ which might institute disputes over pronunciation. With the rare French diminutive of <ot> we could get <yodot>. There’s <yodina> but again that sounds feminine, which I find that despite English not having grammatical gender we have the influences from other languages that dissuade us from wanting gender specific suffixes. For those of Latin interest, some have suggested <yodia>. The most obscure diminutive I found suggested was the Russian <ka> (given as a sense of familiarity) which would give a baby yodka.

But getting back to some more common possibilities that have surfaced. Some are suggesting <yoden> while others want something cute like, <yodie> or <yody>. Another “cute” suffix would give us <yodkin>, a suffix we see in words like munchkin.

While we don’t know what word our society will settle on for baby yoda, it has been a fun journey to see the development of a new word developing before our eyes. While some were calling him “the Child,” Disney put out a statement that referring to the creature as, “baby yoda” was perfectly acceptable. Most recently, though, baby yoda was featured in Times magazine’s people of the year edition last week.

Enjoy the last of the Star Wars nonology this week. May the force be with you!

References

Cooper, Gael Fashingbauer. “Baby Yoda: Everything We Know about The Mandalorian Star.” CNET, CNET, 18 Dec. 2019, https://www.cnet.com/news/baby-yoda-timeline-everything-we-know-about-the-mandalorian-breakout-star/.

Parker, Ryan. “Baby Yoda Makes It Into Time’s People of the Year Issue.” The Hollywood Reporter, 11 Dec. 2019, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/baby-yoda-makes-it-times-people-year-issue-1261727.

“The Playful Language of Suffixes.” Translated by Pavel Palazchenko, The Washington Post, WP Company, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/advertisers/russia/articles/features/20090930/the_playful_language_of_suffixes.html.

Vrabie, Irina, 2017, “The Conceptual Category of the Diminutive in English and Romanian – Existence, Recurrence, Status in Contemporary Language”, Philology and Cultural Studies, Vol 10 (59), No. 1.

Yehl, Joshua. “Baby Yoda Is an Acceptable Name for The Mandalorian’s Breakout Star, Says Dave Filoni.” IGN, IGN, 22 Nov. 2019, https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/11/22/baby-yoda-name-species-mandalorian.