Meaning
You are in disgrace or universally unpopular: 'one more scandal like that and his name is mud'. Said of someone whose reputation has collapsed through their own actions; usually jocular or dismissive in tone rather than solemn. Informal, wry to dismissive; used of reputational ruin without necessarily implying legal guilt. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The phrase was in circulation decades before the event usually said to explain it. It is popularly linked to Dr Samuel Mudd, who treated John Wilkes Booth's broken leg after the 1865 assassination of Lincoln and was convicted (on ambiguous, circumstantial evidence; later pardoned) as a conspirator - but this is folk etymology: The Phrase Finder shows the phrase predates the assassination, and both it and Etymonline record the earliest known citation in John Badcock's Slang: A Dictionary of the Turf (1823): 'Mud - a stupid twaddling fellow. And his name is mud!'. The underlying word history is ordinary: 'mud' had meant the lowest or worst of anything since the 1580s and 'a fool, a thick-skull fellow' by 1708 (Hell upon Earth, 1703, glosses 'Mud, a Fool'), so a person's name 'being mud' meant being a byword for worthlessness. The 1865 coincidence of a real Doctor Mudd kept the false story alive.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- (One's) name is mud
- His name is mud
- My name is mud
- Somebody's name is mud
Usage Examples
- After missing the penalty that cost the cup, his name was mud all over the estate.
- Leak the figures to the press and your name is mud in this department for good.
- When the audit found the receipts, the treasurer's name was mud at every branch meeting.