When Elon Musk and Grimes announced their baby son would be called X Æ A-12 Musk, we assumed they were trolling us.
(I want it known that I just attempted to type that out myself, but I couldn’t figure out… how, so it will be copy and pasted from here on out).
But, there’s been a development, and we can confirm that this name is in fact real. Legit. That’s their newborn baby son’s name.
Watch: Popular Aussie names through the decades – somehow we don’t think X Æ A-12 made it on the list. Post continues below video.
On Tuesday, Musk announced his son’s birth when he tweeted that Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, and the baby boy were doing well and shared an image of himself holding his son, prompting his followers to ask the next logical question: What’s the baby’s name?
“X Æ A-12 Musk,” he replied to one.
Most people thought it was a joke, because… well it seems obvious why people would think it was a joke, right?
On Wednesday, Grimes explained the meaning behind the actually real, not-a-joke name in her own tweet:
That makes sense (it doesn’t), but Musk then corrected her because she got the name of their favourite aircraft wrong and she had to remind him she’d just given birth so cut her some slack, man.
In another interaction about her robot child’s name, she said it sounds like the name of the main character in a story (Star Wars?) and “I hope he vibes with that”.
Now we’re all caught up, but that leaves us with another important question to be answered: How the heck do you pronounce X Æ A-12?
Hear us out because we have a very well researched, compelling theory:
Firstly, X as the unknown variable suggests it’s in relation to the letter and not the Roman numeral symbol for 10, or Greek letter Chi.
Secondly, the symbol character Æ is known as an ‘ash’, pronounced like the A in ‘cat’ or ‘bad’, according to Dictionary.com. So Grimes’ “elven” pronunciation of it as ‘ai’ (basically just ‘I’, or ‘aye’ in a Scottish accent) is… incorrect, but let’s roll with it.
Finally, A-12 refers to the CIA aircraft known as Archangel.
So our best guess for how to pronounce the youngest Musk child is “Ecks Ai Archangel”.
Are we confident? We’re as confident as one can be when trying to determine the pronunciation of X Æ A-12, so sure.
But thankfully, after much speculation, both Elon Musk and Grimes have revealed how to pronounce their son’s name.
However, there is a slight problem: they both pronounce it differently…
On Instagram Grimes wrote, “It’s just X, like the letter X. Then A.I. Like how you said the letter A then I.”
So, that suggests the pronunciation: Ex-Ai-Eye.
Cool.
Except that her partner, and the father of her child, seems to disagree?
During an interview with Joe Rogan, Elon Musk explained that the ‘Æ’ is pronounced “ash”.
So… Ex-Ash-Ai-Eye?
Okay. At this point we give up.
Feature image: Getty and Instagram.
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