Celebrities naming their babies strange things isn't super out of the ordinary. After all, when you have the freedom to just do whatever you want all the time, there's no drawback to naming your child North or Apple or Pilot Inspektor. Most likely your child's never going to have to worry about how it looks on a resume!
Grimes and Elon Musk, however, took it a step further.
She's an indie art-pop alternative musician and he's a billionaire CEO of Tesla. Can I make it any more obvious?
The couple has been dating since 2018 and earlier this year, they gave birth to their first child together.
Initially, the couple announced his name as X Æ A-12, although that was later changed to X AE A-Xii, as symbols and numbers cannot be used in legal names. There was a lot of debate (even from the couple themselves) about how the name was pronounced.
Grimes explained that X was for the unknown variable, AE was her "elven spelling" of AI, and that the A-Xii came from the couple's favorite aircraft.
Not quite the usual things to name a child after, but Elon and Grimes are not exactly a usual couple!
Elon claimed that the name was pronounced basically the way it looks.
"First of all, my partner's the one that mostly came up with the name," Elon began, and then added, "I mean it's just X, the letter X, and the 'Æ' is pronounced, 'Ash,' and then, A-12 is my contribution."
According to Grimes, the baby's name was pronounced X A I, like the three letters all said in a row.
This seems like something they probably should've agreed on before announcing the name to the public!
Many jokes made reference to the fact that it wouldn't be an out-of-place name for a robot or an actual AI, while others talked about how hard it was going to be for the baby's future teachers.
It turns out that after all the joking and the tweets and the public explanations on how to pronounce the baby's full name, the baby doesn't even go by his full name after all!
"The first version, there was too many sort of sharp bells, and it caused tears and just general chaos," Grimes said, before saying, "X would smile more and stuff" as she went on.
It turns out, they just call the baby X!
"I’ve watched Apocalypse Now and stuff with my baby. He's into radical art. He just actually is and I don't think it's problematic to engage with them on that level," she said.
Hopefully, baby X also grows to appreciate radical names as much as radical art!
Baby X is certainly easier to say than his full name, and it's not like going by letter sounds is totally unheard of — there's a few Em's and Jay's out there, after all!
Are you a fan of Grimes and Elon's baby-naming strategies, or do you prefer a more classic name? Let us know in the comments how you feel!
