"Macauley Culkin" is Macauley Culkin's soon-to-be middle name.
On Christmas Day, the actor took to Twitter (his handle is @IncredibleCulk) to announce the winner of a contest in which he'd invited his fans to vote for his new legal name: "My new middle name has been chosen. You voted and the winner is clear. In 2019 my new legal name will be Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin. It has a nice ring to it (if you like my name)."
The contest was run on the actor's website, which he describes as a hybrid of Goop and The Onion:bunnyears: Macaulay Culkin's gentle internet hug. The post reads: "My middle name is something dumb. Larry? Orange? Honestly, I can't even remember it. So I asked you all to send in some better options so I can go down to the courthouse and explain to a judge why I need to change my middle name to something cool."
After what appear to be over a hundred thousand votes (which on Culkin's tongue-in-cheek website could be arbitrary estimates), he appeared on Jimmy Fallon to announce the five finalists: Shark Week (which he's never seen), Kieran (which his brother, Kieran, suggested), The McRib Is Back (excellent), and Publicity Stunt (far too meta). He vowed that he was "seriously" going to change his name, promising Fallon he'd return to show him his new ID.
When Fallon asked his thoughts about "Macaulay Culkin" as an option, the actor imagined the perfect scenario, telling Fallon, "So if somebody comes up to me at the airport and says, 'Excuse me, are you Macaulay Culkin?' I go, 'Well, Macaulay Culkin is my middle name.'"
Culkin is well-acquainted with publicity stunts, though it might be more accurate to say that he mocks publicity stunts by being so overt about them. For instance, in a wildly successful Google commercial that debuted less than a week before Culkin's Twitter announcement, the 38-year-old actor reprised his role as 10-year-old Kevin McCallister. The one-minute long commercial re-enacts iconic moments from Home Alone if Kevin had Google Assistant at his disposal.
In an appearance on Ellen earlier this year, he told Degeneres how as an adult he's thankful for his early work, stating, "I felt like some kid worked really really hard and I inherited all of his money...It allows me to treat everything like a hobby." He announced the launch of his podcast Bunny Ears, in which he and a co-host "talk about things, and stuff, and stuff," all saturated with the same irreverent tone used on his website cheeky enough to ask fans to re-name him.
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