Kevin Is Not Just a Dude's Name on TikTok — What Does It Mean as a Slang Term?

Anyone who has met enough white guys in their life likely knows that Kevin is, at least typically, a guy's name. It may wax and wane in terms of popularity, but usually, Kevin is a name. If you've seen the word on TikTok, though, you know that that's not the case 100 percent of the time. Sometimes, for whatever reason, Kevin is also a slang term.

If you've seen Kevin circulating on TikTok and want to know what the word means in this setting, you're not alone. Here's what we know about what Kevin means in slang.

Kevin, or the related phrase TS So Kevin basically means "something bad," and those terms started on TikTok. TikTok user @druskidrinker appears to have started the use of the term and has also associated other names with other states of being. Owen means "something good," James means "something mid," and Samuel means "something real." It's unclear why these names are associated with these particular states of being, but they have circulated around the internet and caught on.

In their video, @drukisdrinker even gave an example of how to use the term in a sentence. "Yo bro, this food is Kevin asf," they said, making it clear that you could truly just use Kevin in place of the word bad.

In the days after it was introduced, Kevin has spread like wildfire both in videos where it is used properly and in a variety of comments.

The term has been featured in a bunch of videos, some of which explain what the term means, while others leave users entirely unsure of why they are suddenly seeing a random dude's name everywhere.

It's also unclear whether there's a particular Kevin who may have spurred the decision to associate Kevin with bad, or if it's just a name that seems to have a clear association with the notion of bad.

Like any Kevins that you might know in your actual life, this slang term probably won't be around forever. While TikTok has introduced plenty of slang terms that have proven to be sticky, in part because of how useful they are, Kevin falls more into a bucket of memes that burn hot and bright, but also burn out in relatively short order.

After all, the word bad already works well enough, and unless the slang term can spread to people who don't venture into the corners of TikTok where it is currently everywhere, this seems like the kind of slang that people will use for a week or two because they find it funny, and then move onto something else.

There's nothing wrong with that, to be clear. Some trends are meant to last for a relatively short period of time, and Kevin almost definitely falls into that bucket. It's too good for this world, or too annoying to stick around, depending on your perspective.