Grimes’ and Elon Musk’s bizarre baby name, ‘X Æ A-12’ may be illegal in California
Elon Musk and Canadian Juno award-winning singer Grimes announced Monday that their newborn son would be named X Æ A-12 Musk — but there is a chance California regulations may not allow that name to be registered.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder, announced Monday that he and his Canadian girlfriend, Grimes, a couple since May of 2018, had a baby boy. When asked the baby’s name, Musk tweeted, “X Æ A-12 Musk,” with no further explanation. The announcement lit up Twitter with a barrage of questions about the meaning of the post.
“X Æ A-12 is Musk’s sixth child, and his first with the 32-year-old singer from Vancouver whose actual name is Claire Elise Boucher. Musk has five other children: twins Griffin and Xavier and triplets Damian, Saxon and Kai from his previous marriage to Canadian author Justine Musk.
Grimes also took to Twitter to assure people that the name was no joke, explaining the meaning behind the baby’s name. Grimes said “X, the unknown variable, Æ, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence), A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent p+ (A=Archangel, my favorite song).”
While 48-year-old Canadian, American, South African tech guru broke down how to correctly pronounce the baby’s name during an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan this week. He said the second character is “ash” — saying it is pronounced X-Ash-A-12. Musk also credited Grimes for thinking up most of the name, but he said he added the A-12, a nod to the Archangel-12 plane, a reconnaissance aircraft built for the CIA by Lockheed’s Skunk Works, and a precursor to the SR-71, which Musk called the “coolest plane ever.”
The state of California where the couple lives allows only the 26 English letters of the alphabet to be used on birth certificates, along with a limited list of special characters including apostrophes, hyphens and periods. So symbols like Æ are prohibited within the state.
It unknown whether Musk and Grimes will need to change the baby’s name or if they have used a registered a completely different name on the legal birth certificate.
Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada’s Grimes rose to fame with the release of her third album, ‘Visions’ in 2012 featuring the singles “Genesis” and “Oblivion” and also yielding a Juno Award for Electronic Album of the Year. Her fourth studio album, ‘Art Angel‘ was released in 2015 and was named the best album of the year by several publication. Grimes recently released her fifth album, ‘Miss Anthropocene‘ in February.
