What Meme Is That? How to Name a Meme You Cannot Identify
Meme is the name for any image, video, phrase or format that people copy and remix online. To identify one specific meme you have seen but cannot name, reverse image search it first, then search Know Your Meme by describing the format.
Where the question what meme comes from
Memes circulate without names. A format can be posted a million times before anybody writes down what it is called, and the name that finally sticks is usually invented after the fact by an archivist rather than by whoever made the thing. That gap is the entire reason the question exists — and it is why the two tools you will end up using were built within months of each other.
- 5 September 2007 — Know Your Meme starts as a recurring segment inside the Rocketboom daily weblog, created by Kenyatta Cheese, Elspeth Rountree, Jamie Wilkinson and Andrew Baron. It spins out into a standalone video series in December 2007.
- 6 May 2008 — TinEye launches, built by Idée Inc of Toronto. It was the first image search engine on the web to identify images directly rather than relying on keywords, metadata or watermarks.
- December 2008 — the Know Your Meme database, the searchable encyclopedia people actually use, is built by Jamie Wilkinson and Greg Leuch of the Rocketboom research team.
- March 2011, then 2016 — Know Your Meme is acquired by Cheezburger Network, and later by Literally Media, which owns it today.
- March 2022 — Google swaps the Chrome right-click option from Search image with Google to Search with Google Lens, the first step in folding classic reverse image search into Lens.
- February 2025 — Google routes search by image through to the Lens output, so the older index-style result page is largely gone.
The word itself is much older than any of this. Richard Dawkins coined meme in 1976 in The Selfish Gene, for a unit of culture that spreads by imitation, and the online sense grew out of that. If the etymology is what you were after, we cover it in full on what is a meme.
What people mean when they ask what meme
Four different questions arrive at the same two words. Working out which one you are asking decides which tool actually solves it.
| What gets typed | What is actually wanted | What solves it |
|---|---|---|
| what meme is this (looking at an image) | The name of this specific format | Reverse image search, then Know Your Meme |
| what meme means / meme definition | The meaning of the word itself | The plain definition below |
| what meme are they using on me | What the format implies when someone posts it at you | The meaning section of the Know Your Meme entry |
| what meme should I use | A template for a joke you already have | A meme generator, once you know the name |
The plain definition, since it is why a lot of people land here: a meme is a piece of content — an image, a video, a phrase or a reusable layout — that spreads because people copy it and change it. Merriam-Webster carries the internet sense as an amusing or interesting item, such as a captioned picture or video, or a genre of such items, that is spread widely online especially through social media. The older sense, from Dawkins, is broader: an idea, behavior, style or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.
How people actually use the word
Meme works as a noun for the thing, and increasingly as a verb for doing it to someone. Most of the time it is an umbrella term, and people only get specific when a distinction matters. An image macro is a picture with text laid over it, one line top and one bottom. A reaction image is a still posted in place of a written reply. A catchphrase is wording that travels with or without any picture. A format, sometimes called a template, is the reusable structure you can relabel to make a new joke without changing the image at all.
That last distinction is the one that trips up identification. When you ask what meme something is, you are almost always asking for the name of the format, not the name of the single post you saw. Formats have names. Individual posts do not.
How to identify a meme you cannot name
Work down this list. Most memes are resolved by step two, and the later steps exist for the ones that are not.
- Get a clean still. If it is a video, pause on the recognisable frame and screenshot it. Then crop away the app interface, the username, the like counter and the comments. Reverse image engines match on pixels, so anything that is not the meme is noise that pushes you toward other screenshots instead of toward the source.
- Reverse image search it. Do not stop at one engine. They index different things and fail in different ways.
- Search the description, not the joke. If image search fails, type what the picture literally shows into Know Your Meme or a normal search box. Something like man looking back at woman stock photo finds Distracted Boyfriend far faster than any attempt to describe why it was funny. Layout and roles, never the punchline.
- Search the caption as an exact phrase. Many memes are catchphrases first and pictures second. If a distinctive line of text is on the image, put it in quotation marks in a search engine. Catchphrases outlive the images they arrive on.
- Ask a person. Hand-drawn, heavily edited or very new memes defeat machines. Reddit communities built for identifying half-remembered things, such as r/tipofmytongue, will usually get there, provided you describe the format and say which platform you saw it on.
| Tool | Best at | Known limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Google Lens | Recent, widely posted images; it is now the default path from Google Images | Since February 2025 it returns a Lens-style match rather than the old index list, so hunting exact duplicates is weaker than it used to be |
| TinEye | Finding the oldest copy of an image and tracing where it has been posted | A smaller index, and it looks for the same image, so heavily edited versions can miss |
| Yandex Images | Faces, and crops or recolours that other engines give up on | Results skew toward a different slice of the web |
| Know Your Meme search | Turning a description of a layout into a format name | Coverage is crowdsourced, so it is uneven and newer formats lag |
| r/tipofmytongue | Anything a machine cannot match, including drawings and remixes | Slow, and the quality of the answer depends on the quality of your description |
One thing worth knowing before you trust a Know Your Meme page: entries carry a status. Confirmed means the entry has been reviewed and edited. Submission means it has been posted but not yet vetted. Deadpooled means it was rejected or is too thinly documented to stand. Researching means documentation is still under way. A date on a Confirmed entry is worth considerably more than the same date on a Submission, and it is the single fastest way to gauge how much weight to put on what you are reading.
What we do not know
- Nobody publishes accuracy rates. There is no reliable public figure for how often Google Lens, TinEye or Yandex correctly identifies a meme, so the ordering above reflects how these tools are built rather than a measured success rate.
- Lens behaviour keeps moving. Google has changed the reverse image path repeatedly since 2022, most recently in February 2025. Any instruction that depends on a specific button is liable to go stale, which is why the steps above are described by intent.
- Crowdsourced coverage has holes. A meme with no Know Your Meme entry is not a meme that does not exist, and a Deadpooled entry means documentation failed, not that the meme is fake.
- Identification is not origin. Naming a format is the easy half. The first-ever posting of many formats is genuinely disputed, and a confident origin date on any single page should be checked against a second source.
- Community rules change. Subreddits set their own posting requirements and those move without notice, so read the sidebar before asking.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find out what a meme is called?
Save a clean screenshot, run it through Google Lens or TinEye, and read the captions on the pages that come back. If no name surfaces, search Know Your Meme for a description of the layout rather than of the joke.
What does meme mean?
A meme is a piece of content that spreads because people copy it and change it. That covers a captioned picture, a short video, a spoken catchphrase and a reusable template.
Can I reverse image search a meme from a screenshot?
Yes, and it usually works. Crop away the app interface, the username and the comments first, so the engine matches on the meme itself rather than on the surrounding screenshot.
What is Know Your Meme and can I trust it?
It is a crowdsourced encyclopedia of internet culture that began as a Rocketboom video segment in 2007 and gained a database in 2008. Entries marked Confirmed have been reviewed and edited. Entries marked Submission have not, so treat their dates with more caution.
Why does Google Lens fail to find my meme?
Usually because your copy is a screenshot of a screenshot. Repeated recompression, cropping and fresh captions can leave too little of the original image to match. Try a tighter crop, then TinEye or Yandex.
How do I describe a meme I cannot name?
Describe the layout and the roles, not the punchline. Something like two panels with a man rejecting one option and approving another will find a format far faster than repeating the words in the caption.
What is the difference between a meme and a meme template?
The template is the blank structure, such as the image before any words are added. The meme is any finished version that people share. One template can produce thousands of memes.
Where can I ask a person to identify a meme?
Reddit communities built for identifying half-remembered things, such as r/tipofmytongue, are the usual fallback once image search has failed. Describe the format and name the platform where you saw it.
Make a what meme
Load a blank canvas or your own image, add the caption, drag it where you want it, and download. Nothing is uploaded — the editor draws in your browser.
Drag any line on the image to move it.