About

Matching CEO Names refers to a series of memes spreading humorous misinformation that CEOs of various organizations have names that match the names of their corporations or companies, such as the ROBLOX Corporation CEO's name being "Robert Lox" or the TikTok CEO's name being "Tikfang Toksheng." A development of the Real Name Google Searches meme, the format achieved virality in January 2025.

Origin

Predecessor

On December 10th, 2017, Redditor TheDartron123 posted a B Is Short for Bichael meme that humorously imagined the name of the website Pornhub is short for "Pornelius Hubert." The post (shown below) received over 7,600 upvotes in the /r/dankmemes^[1] subreddit in seven years.

On October 7th, 2018, the Facebook^[2] page I play Deftones to my potting soil SMOKE cigs and kill Rabbits posted an information card falsely claiming that Pornhub was created and named after "15 year old Pornelius Hubert." The post (shown below) received over 510 reactions and 2,800 shares in six years and was widely circulated online in the following years.

In 2018, the Real Name Google Searches meme achieved viral popularity. The format involved users posting doctored Google Knowledge panels for celebrities who use an alias, with that alias being extended in a humorous way, such as Cardi B standing for Cardiovascular Bronchitis (example shown below).

2025 Meme

On January 12th, 2025, the Instagram^[3] pages basedarchives and caustic_flesh posted a doctored Google Knowledge panel for the CEO of ROBLOX Corporation David Baszucki, with his name changed to "Robert Lox," humorously matching the name of the company. The post (shown below) garnered over 191,000 likes on Instagram and 450 reposts and 17,100 likes on Threads^[4] in nine days.

Spread

On January 20th, 2025, X^[5] user @LocalBateman reposted the meme, with the post garnering over 8.5 million views, 10,000 reposts and 307,000 likes in one day.

The repost was followed by users on X / Twitter posting similar memes based on Google Knowledge panels, replacing the names of CEOs of various companies with humorous fakes that matched the names of these companies.

For example, on January 20th, 2025, the X^[6] account @EverythingOOC posted a meme that imagined the TikTok CEO's name was Tikfang Toksheng (authorship unconfirmed). The post received over 9.3 million views, 19,000 reposts and 310,000 likes in one day.

The meme format is loosely based on nominative determinism, a hypothesis that people tend to choose areas of work that reflect their names.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References