The purpose of this work is to derive a typology of branching onsets based on the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP), and the CVCV skeleton introduced by Lowenstamm (1996). We claim that if two consonants are sufficiently distinct to form a branching onset, then any set of even more distinct consonants can legitimately also form a branching onset. In other words, for any branching onset with n violations of OCP, there is a branching onset with n-1 violations of OCP.