Talk:My Name Is Mud

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Songs, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to songs on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

The phrase "my name is mud" appears to have a meaning like "I'm not very popular". As a non-native English speaker I wasn't familiar with this. Maybe someone can properly add an explanation to the page?

-Gave example for when some one would say it.

To say say "your name is Mudd" (or less scholastically "mud") is a reference to Doctor Samuel Mudd, who treated John Wilks Booth after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Though this was his duty as a physician because of the hypocratic oath, for Americans this ultimately considered a rather traitorous action and he was ultimately convicted of conspiracy to murder the President.
Samuel Mudd is sometimes mistakenly given as the origin of the phrase "your name is mud", however this phrase has its earliest known recorded instance in 1823, 10 years before his birth and is in fact based an obsolete sense of the word 'mud' meaning 'a stupid twaddling fellow'.
More fool me, I thought it came from Harcourt Fenton Mudd. ;-p 67.5.147.77 06:12, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Just wondering, the "speaker" of the song is described in the article as a "white collar" drunk. Usually white collar implies a medical profession; the term would be "blue collar." Am I wrong?? If I don't see a response in a week or so I'll change it myself, but I'm pretty sure it's blue, not white.

Also, in the movie "Falling Down" (also released in 1993) one of the characters(the cop, portrayed by Robert Duvall) says at the very end of the "My name is mud," when asked what his name was. Could this be a reference to the movie, or vice versa?