Middle Name Challenge

About

The Middle Name Challenge, also known as Introduce Yourself As Your Middle Name, refers to a late 2022 TikTok trend and internet challenge in which creators show photos and selfies of themselves with their middle name overlayed in text. It's ultimately a variant of the precursor Introduce Yourself As The Meaning Of Your Name trend that started in September 2022. Many of the videos notably used the song "Living Room Flow" by Jhené Aiko as the TikTok sound.

Origin

In early September 2022, creators on TikTok started to introduce themselves as the meaning of their names. For instance, an early example was posted on September 2nd, 2022, by TikToker^[1] lemonade.bowl, whose video received roughly 64,200 plays and 19,000 likes in one month (shown below, left). On September 25th, 2022, TikToker^[2] user1236705976983 posted the first known version of the "Middle Name Challenge," using the same TikTok sound^[3] as the "Name Meaning" trend. The video received roughly 520,000 plays and 170,700 likes in nine days (shown below, right).

Spread

Continuing into October 2022, more creators added to the trend, sharing their middle names en masse. For instance, on September 30th, 2022, TikToker^[4] iwuvvnic used a different TikTok sound,^[5] the song "Living Room Flow" by
Jhené Aiko. In four days, the TikTok received roughly 699,700 plays and 115,400 likes and inspired others to use the Jhené Aiko sound.

Eventually, creators on the platform started to humorously reference the trend, many of them complaining about the "ugliness" of their middle name or stating that they couldn't participate in the trend due to them not having a middle name. For instance, on October 1st, 2022, TikToker^[6] bigpoppinny expressed disgust over their middle name "Eloise" in a video that received roughly 164,500 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References