The Phrase "Sign Name Cuff" Is All Over TikTok Because of How It Sounds Backwards

Sometimes by necessity and sometimes because people on TikTok like to hide things, it can be hard to understand the trends taking over the platform. TikTok is famous in part for making obscure, seemingly nonsensical phrases quite common, and we've got another one for you.

TikTok users are asking other people to say "Sign Name Cuff" in their videos. The reasons are devious but relatively straightforward. Here's what we know.

The phrase itself is actually meaningless, but the reason people are saying "Sign Name Cuff" on TikTok is because when you play the audio of it backward, it sounds like something naughty.

More specifically, the sound backward sounds like "f--k me in the a--," and it seems that people are getting a kick out of making people say this, even if it's clear that it's audio being played in reverse.

Is it the smartest or most sophisticated trend to ever take over TikTok? No, but plenty of people seem to think it's funny anyway, which is why it's spread all over the app.

This particular trend is actually quite old and can be seen in videos at least five years old. Even so, it's slowly made its way across the app as more people have discovered it and decided to try it out for themselves.

While there are plenty of TikTok videos that you can enjoy with the sound off by watching and reading the captions, in order to get the full effect of this trend, you have to be able to hear the videos themselves.

Playing audio backward is not something that TikTok invented, of course. In fact, some of the comments under videos featuring the trend make references to Twin Peaks, a show that employed a similar technique to less frivolous ends.

On Twin Peaks, director David Lynch reversed the audio of his character's speaking and then reversed it again, so that it had the garbled, unintelligible quality of reversed speech but was still comprehensible (although they added subtitles as well).

The characters who speak backward on that show are almost all evil in one way or another, and there is something sort of demonic about the sound of audio being played in reverse.

Of course, in this TikTok trend, the reversed audio is being used to play in innocent joke. It's really just the next evolution of asking your friend to spell "I CUP" on the playground and then laughing at the words they inadvertently say.

Those who say "Sign Name Cuff" usually don't understand what they're being asked to do, and it's not like they've done anything wrong by participating. It's a rather simple trend, but one that is hugely enjoyable precisely because it's so easy that almost anyone can do it, especially if you have an unsuspecting older relative who is willing to play along and isn't going to scold you.