With Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez apparently rekindling their famous romance from nearly two decades ago, writer/director Kevin Smith, a long time collaborator of Affleck who worked with Lopez, as well, on 2004's Jersey Girl, would like for it to be known that he was the person who coined the term "Bennifer."
Affleck and Lopez met while filming the infamous 2002 movie flip, Gigli, but were then doing pre-production on Smith's Jersey Girl while they had just started dating and were not yet public, so Smith spent a lot of time with them during this period and he was ahead of the gossip and it allowed him to be ahead of everyone with Affleck and Lopez's "celebrity couple name."
On Monday, Smith tweeted out, "'Bennifer' is trending. It’s a name I first gave the kids during “Jersey Girl” pre-production, before the world found out they were dating. I’d later drop the name in an interview with the @nytimes. Shortly thereafter, it appeared in the article and then entered the vernacular."
Lopez was still married to Chris Judd when she met Affleck during the filming of Gigli, but after she and Judd divorced, "Bennifer" became one of the hottest celebrity couples in years, with their engagement in 2002 drawing a massive amount of attention. Lopez played off of the interest by having Affleck cameo in the music video of her hit song, "Jenny From the Block"...
Their film with Smith, Jersey Girl, was released in 2004, by which point they had already postponed their wedding and ultimately, they split up. Lopez then married singer Marc Anthony in 2004 and had two children with him before they divorced in 2014. She was recently engaged to former Major League Baseball superstar, Alex Rodriguez, before that relationship ended earlier this year.
Affleck also moved on quickly, marrying actor Jennifer Garner in 2005 and having three children with her before they divorced in 2018.
Following Lopez's break-up with Rodriguez (and the end of Affleck's relationship with actor Ana de Armas), the two have been rumored to be spending time with another once more, bringing back their "celebrity couple" name for the first time since 2004 (although, to be fair, Affleck did marry another Jennifer, so I guess he could have kept the name).
Source: The Sunday Times