Elon Musk changed his display name on X to “Gorklon Rust” on Sunday.

The name change follows a familiar pattern for the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who has used X to blur lines between corporate announcements and personal jokes.

In February, he briefly went by Harry Bolz. In December, it was Kekius Maximus..a reference netizens read as a mash-up of Pepe the Frog and Maximus Decimus Meridius, the character played by Russell Crowe in Gladiator.

This time, however, the shift to Gorklon Rust appears to be more than just trolling.

The Telegraph Online asked Musk’s own AI chatbot Grok, developed by his company xAI, what the name meant.

Grok responded: “The term 'Gorklon Rust' appears to be a playful and multifaceted reference, primarily tied to Elon Musk's activities and interests.”

The breakdown, according to Grok:

Gorklon likely stems from Grok, the AI chatbot itself, combined with klon, possibly short for “clone.” This might suggest a tongue-in-cheek version of Grok, or an homage to the parody account @gork, which frequently posts sarcastic, meme-heavy content imitating the bot. Musk has interacted with the @gork account in the past, even adopting its profile picture.

Rust, meanwhile, may be a nod to the Rust programming language. Known for safety and performance, Rust is reportedly part of the technical infrastructure behind xAI. In other words, Musk’s name change was possibly signaling not just a meme, but a tech roadmap.

Then there’s the meme coin.

“Gorklon Rust” is also the name of a token traded on the Solana blockchain, appearing on exchanges such as PumpSwap, Raydium, and Meteora. Following Musk’s name change, the GORK token saw an explosive spike, climbing up to 100% in 24 hours.

Indeed, the display name change came just one day after Musk announced a significant update to X’s recommendation system.

On Saturday, he wrote, “The X recommendation algorithm is being replaced with a lightweight version of @Grok, so will soon be dramatically better! You should notice some improvement already.”

In that light, Gorklon Rust may function as a layered reference…part branding, part joke.

Posts on X floated theories that Gorklon is a mashup of Grok and Elon, while Rust may symbolise technological “renewal” or just literal rust, signaling a kind of decay.

But if history is any guide, Musk’s behavior on X often blends irony with business.

The Kekius Maximus name appeared just as X rolled out features aimed at boosting meme content engagement. During his Harry Bolz phase, Musk made remarks that sparked minor Dogecoin fluctuations.