Name Soundalikes

2022image macroclassic

Name Soundalikes is an image macro format where words on Google search results or Wikipedia pages are circled in red and connected by arrow to a photo of a celebrity whose name they phonetically resemble, such as 'the Bronze Jade' for LeBron James. The format broke out on Twitter in late July 2022 and spread across Instagram and Reddit through August 2022, pulling in Markiplier, MrBeast, and Scott The Woz iterations.

Overview

Name Soundalikes, also called Name Lookalikes or LeBron James Name Lookalikes, is an image macro format built from screenshots of Google search results or Wikipedia pages where a word or short phrase visually resembles a celebrity's name2. Editors circle the target text in red, draw a line or arrow across the image, and connect it to a red-circled headshot of the matching celebrity. Common subjects include LeBron James ('the Bronze Jade,' 'the Bomb Bay,' 'the Bron Jame'), YouTuber Markiplier ('Multiplier,' 'for suppliers'), MrBeast, and Scott The Woz5.

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The format grew directly out of the earlier Red Circle Perpetrators trend, which used the same evidence-board visual grammar to point out suspects in security-camera or news crops3. Name Soundalikes swapped criminals for celebrities and text lookups for the source material, keeping the deliberately over-serious annotated look.

How It Spread

Instagram picked the joke up almost immediately. On August 1, 2022, account willawanna reposted 'the Bronze Jade' image for about 3,100 likes, and two days later the page nocontextnba hit roughly 11,300 likes with the same repost6. On August 16, willawanna extended the bit with a Wikipedia screenshot of 'Bomb bay' pointing to LeBron, earning about 3,000 likes in three days6.

The Twitter thread ecosystem drove the biggest surge. On August 18, ThunderJoltTV tweeted three new Name Lookalikes captioned 'I need more of these,' which passed 8,000 likes and set off a long reply thread of user-made entries4. The next day, Twitter user YogCrashNSmash posted a video reading the lookalikes out loud over SpongeBob music, hitting 134,900 views and 22,300 likes in three days1. That video was reposted to r/OkBuddyRetard on August 21, 2022, for another 7,800 upvotes in under a day7.

On August 20, the format jumped past LeBron when Twitter user RenlsDead circled the word 'Multiplier' next to a photo of YouTuber Markiplier for around 66,900 likes in two days5. Follow-up replies added other targets, including MrBeast (via BruhKonata1, 5,900 likes) and Scott The Woz (via lucaspucasmusic, 19,400 likes on August 21)3.

How to Use This Meme

A typical Name Soundalike starts with a Google search result or a Wikipedia page containing a word or short phrase that phonetically matches a well-known name. Editors screenshot the page, circle the target text in red, draw a line or arrow across the image, and connect it to a red-circled headshot of the matching celebrity, often posting without further caption5.

Frequently Asked Questions