Grimes and Elon Musk Made a Minor Change to Their Son's Name
When Grimes and Elon Musk announced that they named their newborn son X Æ A-12, there was an expected mix of confusion and ridicule, but according to People, the couple made a slight change to their son's name. Bye, X Æ A-12, hello X Æ A-Xii. Though the change is minor, it manages to meet the requirements for California's requirements for a Social Security card. Grimes set the record straight on Instagram, where she was responding to comments about her son's name without directly confirming that she did it to comply with the Social Security Office's rules.
"Nice! Just removed the numbers to confirm [sic] to California law," Grimes wrote, "Roman numerals. Looks better tbh."
RELATED: California Says Naming a Baby X Æ A-12 Isn't Acceptable
After Musk and Grimes's initial announcement, family law attorney David Glass told People that the state of California only accepts the 26 characters in the English language for baby names. The shift from 12 to Xii may make things "look better," according to Grimes, but it follows the rules, though he does mention that "Roman numerals" aren't allowed, which could explain the lowercase format for Xii.
"You can't have numbers, Roman numerals, accents, umlauts or other symbols or emojis," Glass said.
After the baby's arrival, Grimes explained how to pronounce her son's name on Twitter and Musk had to do the same when he appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast.
"A-12 was my contribution," he told Rogan. "The Archangel-12, the precursor to the SR-71, the coolest plane ever." X, he said, is pronounced "like the letter" and "the 'Æ' is pronounced like 'ash.'"
