Rob McElhenney Decides on a Much Simpler Name

Rob McElhenney, showrunner and star of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and friend to Ryan Reynolds, has a famously difficult-to-pronounce last name—Reynolds even once made a music video about it—but not for much longer. McElhenney, an actor and global investor with stakes in soccer teams as well as tech, clothing, and alcohol companies, has legally filed to change his name to Rob Mac, TMZ reports. As Variety notes, McElhenney has already been credited as Rob Mac on press releases for It's Always Sunny as well as Welcome to Wrexham, a series about the football club he and Reynolds own, and he explained why he's making the move in a cover story for the magazine in June.

"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 said, adding that even his relatives admitted they wished they could change the name. Not, however, his closest relatives, apparently: Wife of almost 17 years Kaitlin Olson told the magazine, "The kids [the couple's two teenage sons] are really not happy about it, because they have that last name. And so do I, legally!"