If you’ve been out of the loop, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his musician girlfriend Grimes recently welcomed their first child together. And as many people expected, the couple ended up choosing a rather unique name for their son: X Æ A-12.
Now, the Canadian singer has announced that she and Musk had to rename their newborn.
Following the Guidelines
Apparently, their first pick doesn’t comply with California law, which limits birth names to include only the letters in the English language alphabet. Thus, special characters such as numerals or letter marks found in other languages are not allowed.
It did make an exception though for some necessary punctuations like an apostrophe or a hyphen in the case of such name iterations like O’Hare or Curtis-Smith.
With these limitations in mind, Grimes said that X Æ A-12 will now be X Æ A-Xii. She even exchanged thoughts about her son’s name with her Instagram followers replying that Roman numerals look better to one comment.
Meaning Behind the Name
The issue of legality aside, X Æ A-Xii (pronounced as X Ash A Twelve) is one interesting name with an even more interesting backstory.
Contrary to what critics may think about the name being just a random string of characters, Musk explained that the A-12 (now A-Xii) part was his personal contribution and stood for Archangel 12, which is a reconnaissance aircraft.
For the most part, though it was Grimes who thought of the name and shared its origin in a tweet. The X, she said, stands for the unknown variable and crossed swords while Æ is her elven spelling of AI, which stands for artificial intelligence.
She then revealed that A-12 (Archangel 12) is her and Musk’s favorite aircraft.
Parenting Plans
With parents like Grimes and Musk, X Æ A-Xii will definitely have an unconventional upbringing.
Case in point: The couple has already announced that they are planning to adopt a gender-neutral style of parenting for their first child.
This relatively new way of raising kids primarily revolves around the idea of exposing the child to both feminine and masculine activities and toys regardless of their birth gender. In this parenting style, it’s the kids, instead of the parents, that get to choose their own preference in terms of clothes and toys.
In the end, its goal is to let the child be able to freely choose their own gender identity as opposed to being prescribed one as what normally happens.