About

Name to Symbol Trend or the Symbol Name Trend, also known as The Symbol Thing, refers to a TikTok trend where users input a name, often their significant other's, into instafonts.io to translate it to a series of symbols, then copy and paste the symbols into their social media bios. The trend began on TikTok in June 2022 and became popularized over the following months, seeing a peak in popularity in October of that year.

Origin

The earliest known video affiliated with the trend was posted on June 18th, 2022, by TikToker^[1] @nrlirfhn.frzl._ In this video, she puts her significant other's name into a text-to-symbol translation tool on instafonts.io,^[2] then pastes the translated symbols into her profile, garnering over 332,000 views in four months (shown below, left). The trend spread over the following days. For example, on June 19th, TikToker^[3] @wyco_ posted a video doing the same thing, garnering over 6.3 million views in the same rough span of time (shown below, right). On the same day, TikToker^[4] @777.ivvy posted a tutorial on how to do the trend, garnering over 600,000 views in four months.

Spread

The trend continued to spread over the following months, becoming notably popular in October 2022. For example, on October 5th, 2022, TikTokers^[5][6] @_ehlci and @_shrlnrsss posted videos following the trend, garnering over 5.3 million views and 8.5 million views in five days respectively (shown below, left and right).

On October 6th, TikToker^[7] @kithlyj4s posted a video following the trend, garnering over 1.9 million views in four days (shown below). On October 10th, Indy 100^[8] posted an article on how to do the trend.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References