Meanings
- idiomaticinformalOne is unpopular, in disgrace or embroiled in scandal; one's reputation is tarnished.
His name will be mud once people learn the truth about why he was fired.
2 more examples
My name is Mud / Not to be confused with Bill, or Jack, or Pete, or Dennis / My name is Mud, it's always been / 'Cause I'm the most boring sonsabitch you've ever seen / I dress in blue, yes, navy blue from head to toe / I'm rather drab, except my patent shoes / I make 'em shine, well, most the time
1993, “My Name is Mud”, performed by PrimusThanks to disastrously unpopular attempts by the likes of BuzzFeed to create AI-assisted content, its name is mud in the media industry.
2023 November 21, Zing Tsjeng, “AI is changing the world – and I’ve just eaten the underwhelming pasta that proves it”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
Origin
Ultimate origin unknown. Popularly attributed to Dr. Samuel Mudd's assistance to the assassin of president Abe Lincoln, but an older print dictionary already lists the phrase.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
one's name is mud. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/one's%20name%20is%20mud
“one's name is mud.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/one's%20name%20is%20mud. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “one's name is mud,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/one's%20name%20is%20mud.
Source: one's name is mud on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.