Rob McElhenney is supposedly legally changing his name to "Rob Mac"

McElhenney reportedly filed the paperwork for the change on Thursday, which does not automatically preclude this being a massive, elaborate joke.

By William Hughes | June 28, 2025 | 2:04pm

Rob McElhenney/Rob Mac, Photo: Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images

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Rob McElhenney is supposedly legally changing his name to

It can be hard to tell what level of irony It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia co-creator Rob McElhenney is operating on at any given moment. This is, after all, a man who once very famously put on 60 pounds of body fat just to see if he could (and to provide new fodder for his FX comedy), and who took jokes about buying a soccer team with Ryan Reynolds and turned them into both a) owning a soccer team with Ryan Reynolds and b) a TV show about same. So when MeElhenney noted in recent interviews that he’d started going by “Rob Mac” in his professional communications, apparently because he’s been doing more international business and people from non-English countries struggle with his last name, it’s hard to tell if that’s a genuine change he’s making, or an elaborate joke.

Anyway, TMZ reports today that McElhenney has filed paperwork to legally change his name to Rob Mac. So if it is a joke, it’s one that’s now graduated to the “probably getting a notary public involved” stage. McElhenney apparently filed the paperwork on Thursday of this past week. And, just to be clear, this isn’t just a change to his stage name through SAG or the DGA or anything: It’s supposedly a full, legal name change.

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McElhenney soft-launched the rebranding (whoops, gave ourselves a shudder with that one) in a profile he did with wife Kaitlin Olson with Variety back in May, stating that “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.” Which, Olson noted, “The kids are really not happy about it, because they have that last name. And so do I, legally!” But McElhenney’s Sunny co-creator Glenn Howerton possibly summed it up the vibe of all this best when asked about the possible name change, which was apparently news to him: “You could be telling me something that he’s joking about, or you could be telling me something where he could be in downtown L.A. changing his name right now for all I know.” Same!