# How to get an mc to report it's instance name?

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-to-get-an-mc-to-report-its-instance-name/151762>\
**Category:** flash\
**Created:** [June 17, 2005, 9:53pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-to-get-an-mc-to-report-its-instance-name/151762 "2005-06-17T21:53:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![waxpants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/aca169/32.png) [@waxpants](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/waxpants)\
**Post date:** [June 17, 2005, 9:53pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-to-get-an-mc-to-report-its-instance-name/151762/1 "2005-06-17T21:53:35Z")

</div>

Is there something in actionscript that allows you to get an mc’s instance name or a way to make an mc report it’s instance name?

For example something nice and easy like this would be: this.\_whatIsMyInstanceName

I would like to build something like the following into an mc I’m using that is being attached in multiple instances:

```auto

this.onRelease = function(){
_parent.changeTheColourOfThisMCWithoutKnowingItsInstance(this._whatIsMyName);
}

```

I hope you get what I’m driving at. And I’m hoping there is a simple solution for this because it seems like an elementary thing to want to do but I was stumped trying to find something to do this in the help files.