Rob McElhenney has addressed the blowback to legally changing his name to Rob Mac after he was criticized for slowly morphing into fellow Wrexham A.F.C. co-owner Ryan Reynolds in the most Ryan Reynolds way possible.
“Yes, I’m shortening my name to Rob Mac. Mostly a stage name, but I digress,” the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia creator and actor stated in a one-minute video posted to social media. “Is it kinda douchey? Sure. But the amount of time that I have wasted trying to get people to either spell or say my name correctly is literally days of my life. Trust me, I added it up.”
McElhenney also clarified that while he loves his family and the shared heritage of his previous name, the idea of it being deeply ingrained is simply not true: “Not only have many generations changed its spelling, the current one was just given to my ancestor by a government official who decided that this was now the spelling.”
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“Times have changed and most people already call me Rob Mac anyway,” he concluded. “My family knows me and loves me regardless of how many syllables I have, and that’s the only thing that I really care about. There are so many things going on in the world, and this is a silly one to continue to waste your time with.”
News of McElhenney officially filing for the name change broke last Thursday following a May interview with Variety, where he initially explained the decision was primarily to facilitate the expansion of his soccer investments into South America.
“As our business and our storytelling is expanding into other regions of the world and other languages in which my name is even harder to pronounce, I’m just going by Rob Mac,” he stated.
Of course, the new name also has a connection to McElhenney’s Always Sunny character, Ronald “Mac” McDonald, whom he has played since 2005. Season 17 of the show premieres on July 9th at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on FX and will be available to stream the next day on Hulu.
I said what I said. pic.twitter.com/lvwKgTBBrx
— Rob McElhenney (@RMcElhenney) July 1, 2025
Content shared from consequence.net.