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Elon Musk and Grimes Changed Their Baby's Name to X Æ A-Xii

Photo credit: Theo Wargo - Getty Images
Photo credit: Theo Wargo - Getty Images

From Esquire

UPDATE 3: It turns out that California law doesn't look too kindly on names that include numbers, which caused some observers to wonder just how little X Æ A-12's moniker would go over at Grimes and Elon Musk's local social security office. Without getting into the reason for the name change, Grimes posted a comment to Instagram over Memorial Day weekend noting that the baby is now known as X Æ A-Xii. "Roman numerals," she added. Looks better tbh."

UPDATE 2: A few hours after Grimes provided a detailed explanation for the name of her baby, the father, Elon Musk chimed in to correct a slight error in her tweet. Grimes said the A-12 part of the baby's name, X Æ A-12, came from the precursor to their favorite aircraft, the SR-71. Musk responded to her tweet, offering a correction: "SR-71, but yes," he wrote. To which Grimes responded, "I am recovering from surgery and barely alive so may my typos b forgiven but, damnit. That was meant to be profound."

UPDATE: Grimes has explained the meaning behind her and Elon Musk's baby, name, X Æ A-12. As she wrote on twitter:

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 + (A=Archangel, my favorite song)

Original post below:

As every new parent knows, there is no greater feeling than looking into a newborn child's eyes, and then assigning it a name that reads like the phonetic spelling of the sound a dial up modem makes while connecting to the World Wide Web. Potentially, that is what Grimes and Elon Musk did in the wee hours of the morning when the couple welcomed a new child into the world. While Grimes has opted to let the child choose its gender, Elon Musk is a bit more ... well...

When asked what the child's name is, Musk also dropped this little nugget. The newest Musk heir is named X Æ A-12 Musk. The baby looks like more of an X Æ A-10 than an X Æ A-12, but this is their choice to make as parents. The internet immediately began dunking on the couple, but Grimes and Elon? These are smart people. If you can build a car to space, you deserve a little more credit. One very complex Reddit theory explains that the symbol (Æ) could represent Ash, the A-12 could be representative of the Archangel design effort by Lockheed Martin, and the X is a placeholder. Meaning the actual name would be [placeholder] Ash Archangel Musk, which is quite possibly the most Elon Musk x Grimes collaboration that could ever happen.

But there could be any other number of explanations for this baby name. What if perhaps this really was inspired by the noise of a dial up modem connecting to CompuServe circa 1999? What if, in a real Muskian twist, that's not the baby's name, but just its make and model? Perhaps this is a quantum physics equation the child solved while in the womb?

What if this isn't actually the name of their child, and just a public joke they're playing to keep the actual name of their child private? We may never know. Welcome to the world, X Æ A-12. If that is your real name, kindergarten is going to be rough.

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