She’s going to a restaurant. She’s ordering takeout. She’s getting in an Uber. In every instance, she makes sure to drop her name: Chanty Beluga.
Who is this smiling, millennial blond woman whose videos have gone viral on TikTok? And where did that hypnotic and unique name come from?
The character is the alter ego of comedian and actor Courtney O’Donnell, who posts TikTok videos of herself as Chanty Beluga.
Cheerful and demurely dressed, Chanty Beluga is always finding herself in situations where she has to use her goofy name. She’s checking in at a restaurant, ordering takeout and introducing herself at a pool party.
The videos are quick and simple. Just a woman casually saying her ridiculous name, which seems to roll off the tongue and promote repeat listening. The character has already spawned multiple fan accounts on TikTok.
“This is so dumb and I see myself becoming rapidly obsessed with it,” one follower commented on a TikTok video of Chanty at a coffee shop. “No notes. Just a woman named Chanty Beluga in situations where she makes her name known.”
“Classic Chanty,” another one wrote.
“I would die for Chanty Beluga,” another commented.
O’Donnell is a Los Angeles-based comedian who has a separate TikTok account under her real name. She posts short comedy skits as different, non-Chanty Beluga characters, from the host of the fictional “Yup, She Went There” podcast to a divorcée singing through the heartbreak.
She posted her first Chanty Beluga video on July 28 introducing herself, and it was a hit with nearly 500,000 views.
O’Donnell told Rolling Stone that she came up with the catchy name in the middle of the night while filming the upcoming comedy “Stephanie, Bride to Be” in Brooklyn, New York. She and the cast were “being silly” when it popped into her head.
“And I said, ‘Hi, my name’s Chanty,’ and we thought that was funny,” she said. “I was like, ‘Actually, my name is Chanty Beluga.’ We said the full name, and it seriously went viral in the room. We just could not stop saying Chanty Beluga.”
The Chanty Beluga skits are so short that they allow O’Donnell’s followers to have fun by building out a longer story for the character.
“Chanty doesn’t play abt her takeout,” one follower commented on a video of Chanty Beluga ordering food.
The blank canvas of a character who’s not much beyond a funny name allows the internet to take it and run with it.
“She’s a Barbie doll. She’s a paper doll. You can put her in any situation. She can do anything,” O’Donnell told Rolling Stone. “I had this instinct to really build her up and create this crazy backstory, but I thought it was more interesting to allow the internet to create its own.”
Count Major League Baseball among those followers. The MLB X account posted on Aug. 18 that a woman named “Chanty Beluga” was presenting that day’s schedule of baseball games.
“Sometimes you go viral for something that you didn’t connect to, and I actually think this is really fun,” O’Donnell told USA Today. “I love pretending to be this woman on the internet who’s sort of quirky and basic and talking to people in the comments like I’m her.”
Then there’s one simple reason. Saying “Chanty Beluga” is fun.
“Something about the intonation of the words that feels like crack to say,” O’Donnell told Rolling Stone.
Now the question is whether Chanty Beluga will reach the internet heights of 6-7 before people inevitably have had enough.
“I like the idea that she is the 6-7 for the girls and the gays,” O’Donnell told USA Today. “That would be really amazing. I don’t know. We’ll have to see. I’d be very happy. These things have a short shelf life, so I’m happy to just kind of be a part of it for now and let people have their fun. If we see some Halloween costumes, I won’t be mad.”
