- Elon Musk and musician Grimes gave birth to their first child.
- They have named their baby boy X Æ A-12.
- The unique and possibly nonregistrable name has fueled a lot of memes.
- The name looks like a string of random letters, numbers, and symbols.
- The unknown variable,”Æ” elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence).
According to an article published in Business Insider, the musician Grimes gave birth to her first child with the tech titan Elon Musk and the pair confirmed that they named their baby boy X Æ A-12.
A unique name
Unsurprisingly, the unique and possibly nonregistrable name has fueled a lot of memes, including a popular one about how it’s actually pronounced “Kyle.”
The “Kyle“ pronunciation had some people fooled, but Grimes clarified that the name is pronounced like the letters X, A, and I.
Also, Musk said on an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast that the baby’s name was pronounced “X Ash Archangel.“
A tricky name to pronounce
In the meme economy, the price of “X Æ A-12“ is steadily rising. What looks like a string of random letters, numbers, and symbols is actually what Grimes and Elon Musk have said is the name of their newborn boy.
The Tesla CEO first confirmed late Monday that his girlfriend, the musician Grimes (aka Claire Boucher, aka c), had given birth to a healthy baby boy. In the same thread of tweets, he also said they named him X Æ A-12, which was met with confusion since people thought it might be a joke or a riddle pointing to the real name.
An amalgamation of different jargons
But Grimes confirmed in a tweet that her first child’s name is X Æ A-12. Musk has five other boys already, and they all have comparatively normal names (Damian, Griffin, Xavier, Saxon, and Kai). Grimes explained that the X stands for “the unknown variable,” that Æ is her “elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence),“ and that A-12 is the precursor to her and Musk’s favorite aircraft, the SR-71 Blackbird.
The memes are clever, but Grimes confirmed the actual pronunciation of her son’s name, and it isn’t ‘Kyle’. The original poster came up with Kyle by determining that each part of X Æ A-12 is a clue. They assumed X stood for the Greek letter chi, pronounced “ki,“ that Æ was pronounced “ai“ (like Grimes said in her tweet), and that the A-12 referred to the 12th letter of the alphabet, L.
You can surmise that “Kyle“ comes out of that jumble, but it’s a bit of a reach, given that Grimes had said A-12 is a reference to a plane, not a letter.
Is it the real name?
Furthermore, X Æ A-12 may not be Grimes and Musk’s son’s actual name. California law prevents a birth certificate from having a baby name that includes symbols or numbers — but even if legally the name has to be something else for the child to obtain a Social Security number, the pair have insisted they’re calling him that.
Is this the baby’s real name? Are we the victims of elaborate trolling? Will California let X Æ A-12 get printed on a birth certificate? For now, a lot is still unclear.
To get information about further developments on the baby’s name, read our article Elon Musk Goes Roman As X Æ A-12 Baby Name Against the Law!
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Source: BusinessInsider
