Milked Nuts, The Poop Zoomies, and Almond Schwarzenegger II: The beautiful and disgusting creativity of group chat names

Show me your group chat names and I'll show you who you are

I love group chats.

I add a lot to them:

• Gross jokes

• Camp counselor–tier group planning and people wrangling

• The ability to remember every foolish thing everyone else in the group has ever said or done

• The ability to weaponize said thing for the rest of the group's enjoyment

(This tweet is my internal family system.)

I love how group chats are named.

Four group chats provide nearly all the support and structure for my personal and professional life.

They are:

• Hot Dog Talk: This is where my closest neighbors and I make plans to eat hot dogs.

• The Yardy Boys: This is a subset of Hot Dog Talk, but limited to those of us who live for garage sales.

• Ass Mansion All Call: This is a group text with my friend who lives across the street and my friend who lives across my driveway. We use this chat to coordinate our morning coffee, gossip about our dating lives, and loan each other power tools.

• Almond Schwarzenegger II: This is my longest-running group text, going on ten years. It’s with Lauryn Warnick of Villain Branding, Rachel Bernard of Parts of Speech, and Nora Geiss of Super Premium. The amount of professional support, naming advice, and deep deep deep friendship in this group text cannot be overstated. I would not be where I am today without it. (I also talk about my digestive issues in this group; everyone is really nice about it.)

“Caitlin, you’re a namer! Of course your group chats have freaky little names.”

I’ve only named maaaybe half of the group chats I’m in. I’ve found that group chats are one little pocket of our digital lives where even the least name-savvy person you know can knock it out of the park with a group text name that outlasts most marriages.

Why are group chat names so ~colorful~?

I have been pondering what makes group chat names so authentic, weird, creative and, frankly, revealing about what a person finds fun/funny/interesting. (A very good first date question: “What are the names of your group chats?” You’ll learn a lot. You might not like what you learn but you will learn.)

The best group chat names—through super specific, and sometimes graphic, word choices—become shorthand for what we love to share with our friends and family.

“It’s just how we are—we’re The Yardy Boys.”

“It’s Yardy Boys stuff…you wouldn’t understand.”

“I’m a Yardy Boy. Of Course I’m Crazy. Do You Think a Sane Person Would Do This Job?”

(Picture that last one in ten different typefaces like those bot-generated shirts you get in targeted ads.)

What makes for a good group chat name?

I surveyed my Instagram friends to get a sampling of names of group chats, just to make sure this phenomenon truly existed across ages and geographies. The responses did not disappoint.

From a HIGHLY BIASED* sampling of 106 group chat names (from 65 people—some people are in a LOT of group chats), I present to you some characteristics of group chat names that I observed.

Four common group chat naming attributes

It’s good to be gross—grosser than you’d expect that person or group to be

We do not have enough places to be immature. (Well, I do, but I suspect many people do not, what with adult responsibilities and such).

A group chat name that would make a 3-year-old lose their shit sends a message to a group text’s participants: Your most disgusting jokes are not just safe here; they are life affirming. We become our most realized selves when a text hits that you’ve “darkened the waters” and we recognize that you’re sharing that you had day-defining diarrhea. There is no knowledge more sacred.

Examples from my friends’ chats:

• Poop Troop

• The Poop Zoomies

• Poop Group

• Diarrhea Buds

• Lick My Beef

• Mommy Milkers

• Van Sex

• Darth Vader’s Dick

(I’m holding back a lot of grosser ones. I don’t know my Substack audience’s appetite for poop stuff).

It’s about exclusivity: This is a VIP zone. And you are in.

This is not a general-admission chat arena. To be here, you had to meet certain criteria. They might be about identity, shared interests, life stages, location, or something far, far more esoteric.

Examples from my friends’ chats:

• New Grassy Dads

• Bad Moms Club

• Death Metal Dads

• The Coven

• Bubble Boys

• The Bing Bong Boyz

• The Gurlz Room

• The Royal Alliance

• 1/2 DOZ EXCLUSIVE CHAT

• Hot Singles in Catskill, NY💃

• Kratom Cowboys

• Latke Grannies

It’s a way to organize around a shared hobby or activity.

I light up when The Yardy Boys has an unread message—it could mean my next clown beanbag toss is right around the corner.

(Yes, I bought this.)

People have group chats named for a shared love of reality shows (you NEED to be able to talk about them with other people when you find one you like), a shared plan or mission, or other offline gathering stuff.

Examples from my friends’ chats:

• Ren Fairies

• Sour Patch (this is a sourdough bread chat!)

• Canoe Hang?

• Convince Us to Move Upstate (the couple in question was not convinced and chose a home elsewhere,

  but the group name persists)

• Citizens of Bachelor Nation

• Full Moon Supper Club

• Arnold S Appreciators (Hey, we got another Arnold name in the mix! I want in!)

• Summer 2025

It’s a way to elevate your group’s lore

This is essentially the overarching strategy when naming all group chats, but a specific detail that cues an inside joke, something someone said while high, or an incredibly mundane thing that happened one time, which would not be memorialized under any other circumstances, are all fertile grounds for developing more cryptic names.

Examples from my friends’ chats:

• Voodoo Cat

• Fran's Fudge Factory

• Skrinklers

• Trees Cheese Fish

• You've Got Morbs

• Michael Lore

• Sugar Babies on the Net

How should you name your group chat?

Don’t overthink it.

What silly thing did someone say TODAY that would otherwise be forgotten but instead can become THE most defining identifier of your friend group? (As I write this, my friend sitting across the living room for me suggested the name “Target Trash” because we saw a lot of trash on the floor at the Target in Kingston yesterday. Hey, works for me!)

No matter what, your true-to-your-friend group stab in the dark will be better than anything on this list of 101 Funny Group Chat Names from Parade Magazine.

I’ve never struggled with how to name a group chat—not because I’m a namer, but because I go with the first thing that comes to mind. Some of those names stick. And when they didn’t, it’s because someone funnier than me replaced my bad name with something better.

A group text, after all, is a group project.

Still got nothing?

Run with a name shared by my friend Nika:

Group Chat.

You won’t be wrong!

Happy naming!

Caitlin

*Tolerating me in physical and digital spaces over a longer period of time typically means sharing at least some of my enthusiasm for low-quality humor. My Instagram friends and followers are gross. Just like me.

Want more naming resources?

Take an upcoming Naming for Everyone live small-group class, or check out our new self-guided series.

Download free booklets from the Truth in Branding series on naming and trademarks.

Check out an episode of Big Names in Naming, the podcast where I interview namers about…naming.