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Tesla founder Elon Musk and pop-singer Claire Boucher, known by the stage name Grimes, welcomed their first baby boy on Monday.
Musk confirmed the news Monday after a fan asked if there was any update on the baby.
“A few hours away!” Musk confirmed the news on Twitter after a fan asked for an update on the baby. “Mom & baby all good,” he added a few hours later.
What got the internet going wild, is the unusual name of the couple’s firstborn child, X Æ A-12 Musk, which at first sounded like a somewhat confusing attempt for a joke, but the tech mogul later confirmed the moniker as official.
Given that X Æ A-12 is not exactly a name that rolls off the tongue, many members of the online community wondered how the moniker would be pronounced, as memes flooded around Twitter and Facebook.
Luckily, the 32-year old Canadian singer stepped in and explained how they settled on the name, which was inspired in part after a CIA spy plane.
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Grimes tweeted Tuesday “X” stands for “the unknown variable.”
Æ, meanwhile, is her “elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence.)” The ligature Æ, known as ash, appeared in Old English and Latin and but has mostly fallen out of use. However, in some languages such as Icelandic Norwegian and Danish Æ is classed as a letter.
Do you follow? Moving right along, “A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent,” she added.
And, finally, “A” in the name represents “Archangel,” which Grimes described as her favorite song.
For starters, a shoutout to the future teachers of the young boy who would have to pronounce his name during the roll call.
However, it turns out, X Æ A-12 will be spared from awkward times introducing himself after all, as the state of California won’t accept the name as legal.
While the baby boy’s moniker is technically legal, the state of California won’t accept it as valid, because the state does not allow numbers and signs in legal names, David Glass, a family law attorney, told PEOPLE.
“In California, you can only use the ’26 characters’ of the English language in your baby name,” he told PEOPLE. “Thus, you can’t have numbers, Roman numerals, accents, umlauts, or other symbols or emojis. Although an apostrophe, for a name like ‘O’Connor,’ is acceptable.”
If the new parents filled out X Æ A-12’s birth certificate at the hospital “with the odd numbers, dashes, and symbols, it will be submitted and then rejected, and they’ll be asked to submit it again.”
“They have an opportunity to appeal the rejection of the birth certificate application, but it’s unlikely that it will be granted because, again, California… has been struggling with using symbols,” Glass told the publication.
Legal or not, the bizarre baby name has raised eyebrows, even during the unrelenting weirdness of 2020, and has the entire Twitter speculating on a possible meaning.
“Your kid’s name must contain at least one lowercase letter, one capital letter, and one number.” remarked one Twitter user.
“Hmm, wouldn’t it be cool if the boy would be legally named “X” and @elonmusk would give him his x.com domain to do whatever he wants!” wrote another.
Pronunciation of the name remains a mystery.
