Why Elon Musk And Grimes Can't Really Name Their Baby X Æ A-12
Surprise! The Elon Musk baby name story isn't a wrap quite yet. As you may recall, just a few days back Musk announced his baby's name to an incredulous Twitterverse: X Æ A-12. While some may have wondered if this was actually some kind of a joke, it turned out that Musk and baby mama Grimes were actually quite serious. Grimes even tweeted an explanation of the name that accorded with earlier speculation, at least for the A-12 part — yes, this is a reference to the A-12 aircraft, which she described as, "No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent," and also referenced the plane's nickname, Archangel, which she said is her favorite song (although there are a number of songs by this name, and she did not specify which one's her fave).
As to the rest of the name, she says that X stands for "the unknown variable, adding in an emoji of crossed swords to further complicate matters. Æ is supposed to be her "elven spelling of Ai," which she says stands for love (which it does in Chinese, according to Han Trainer Dictionary) or Artificial Intelligence. (Hmm, is she implying something about Musk that maybe we didn't know? He could well be the world's first robot billionaire!) Alas for all that Grimes/Musk naming creativity, since the state of California says nuh-uh, that elven aircraft name won't fly their friendly skies.
California frowns on names with nonstandard characters
People spoke to family law attorney David Glass about Baby Musk's moniker, and he cast doubt on the likelihood of this name being accepted as valid by the state of California. Glass explained that it's not exactly illegal, yet the state tends to reject birth certificates where names are spelled out using characters other than the standard 26 letters of the English alphabet. Which means that yes, VSCO girls, you're within your rights to name your babies "Sksksksk" or any other keyboard smash you come up with, as long as you stick to smashing only letter keys — according to Glass, "you can't have numbers, Roman numerals, accents, umlauts or other symbols or emojis. (Sorry, '80s rock fans, Hüsker Dü, Mötley Crüe, and Motörhead are right out, though apostrophes are acceptable so Baby Guns N' Roses should be okay.)
What will this mean for the Musk family? Glass speculates that should they submit a birth certificate with the name X Æ A-12, it will be rejected. They can appeal, but the appeal probably won't succeed since California's trying to hold back the rising tide of people who want to name their baby Poop Emoji. Papa Elon's used to getting his own way though, and he's got more than enough money to make things happen. So will they change the baby's name, or will they instead choose to emigrate to a charming little cottage on the south coast of Mars? Stay tuned.