What is Better Names For Things?

Better Names For Things is an image macro joke where photos of everyday objects, animals, or food are captioned with plain, made-up names describing what the thing does or looks like.

Where did Better Names For Things come from?

An early version appeared on The Tangential in January 2011 as 'Better Names for Infomercial Products', and comedy writer Jeff Wysaski set the modern template on his Pleated Jeans blog, following it with a second batch in March 2012.

What does Better Names For Things mean?

It's a joke that treats an everyday thing as if its real name were simply a plain description of what it does or looks like, usually reduced to two or three words per label.

How do you use Better Names For Things?

Take a photograph of an ordinary object, animal, or food and add an oversized caption giving it a made-up literal name, posting several at once in a gallery, the way Wysaski laid it out on Pleated Jeans.

Is Better Names For Things still popular?

The main blog and video wave was most active between 2012 and 2014, spreading through humor blogs and Wysaski's Pleated Jeans store-prank videos.

Better Names For Things

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Published August 1, 2026

Better Names For Things is an image macro joke where photos of everyday objects, animals, and food get relabeled with plain, made-up names that describe what the thing does or looks like. Comedy blogger Jeff Wysaski popularized the format on Pleated Jeans in late 2011, and the naming gag later spread to store-prank videos, YouTube compilations, and Twitter hashtag rounds like #TheInternetNamesSpace.

image macro memes absurdist humor memes early 2010s memes prank memes hashtag memes

Overview

Better Names For Things is an image macro joke where a photo of an object, animal, or food is captioned with a made-up name that plainly describes what the thing does or looks like. A cat might be labeled 'furry mouse hunter,' a stapler 'paper pinch pinch,' and so on, with the humor sitting in how flatly literal each replacement is2.

Entries are usually posted in sets of ten to twenty photo panels per gallery, following the layout Jeff Wysaski used on his blog Pleated Jeans2. Over time the joke broke out of blog listicles into store-prank videos, YouTube compilations, and Twitter hashtag rounds3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Pleated Jeans (blog) / Twitter (2016 hashtag revival)

Creator

Jeff Wysaski

Date

2011

An early version of the joke ran on culture blog The Tangential on January 11, 2011 as 'Better Names for Infomercial Products,' which renamed TV gadgets like the Slap Chop with sarcastic alternatives1. The recognizable modern template was set later that year by comedy writer Jeff Wysaski, who published 'Better Names for Things (10 Pics)' on his Pleated Jeans blog on December 6, 20114.

Wysaski followed up with a second batch on March 14, 2012, framed as returning 'by popular demand,' and added a note that he was open for freelance product-naming work2.

How It Spread

Gizmodo covered Wysaski's video editions of the format: on August 29, 2012, he walked through a Target store and stuck homemade labels with alternate names onto products on the shelves, and on May 8, 2013, he shot a similar prank at a Lowe's hardware store3.

YouTuber Jenna Marbles picked up the format in a February 14, 2013 video called 'Better Names For Animals,' which pulled over 4.2 million views, followed by 'Better Names For Foods' and 'Better Names For Body Parts' in the years after. Redditor Wardcannon opened /r/betternamesforthings that same January as a submissions hub for user contributions4.

The gag flared up again in March 2016 during the fallout from Britain's 'Boaty McBoatface' research-ship vote, when astronomer Alex Parker tweeted a comet photo captioned 'Comet McCometface' under the hashtag #TheInternetNamesSpace, and zoologist Rob O'Sullivan launched #TheInternetNamesAnimals with an animation of a spider called 'Nopey McNoMyGod'4.

How to Use This Meme

The typical format is a photograph of an ordinary object, animal, or food with an oversized caption naming it based on what it visibly does or looks like. Common conventions include childlike or onomatopoeic words for animals, texture-based names for food, and posting entries as a batch of ten to twenty per gallery so the joke escalates across the set.