Epic Social Media Reactions To Elon Musk Naming His Son ‘X Æ A-12’
Hollywood celebrities are known for choosing eccentric, out-of-the-box names for their children. With Cardi B, Kim Kardashian West and Jason Lee respectively naming their kids ‘Kulture’, ‘North West’ and ‘Pilot Inspektor’, there’s no wonder celebrity baby names cause a lot of mockery and memes.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and his girlfriend Grimes (aka Claire Boucher) have been dating since 2018. They announced that Grimes was pregnant in January 2020 and welcomed their first child on May 4. Musk already has five other children, who all have comparatively normal names (Damian, Griffin, Xavier, Saxon, and Kai).
After confirming that the mother and child were fine after birth, Musk replied to a twitter user’s request to reveal the baby’s name with a seemingly random string of numbers, letters and symbols.
The tweet broke the internet. Memes exploded across social media as netizens trolled the name saying it sounded too crazy and futuristic, and implied that the tech fanatic’s child is most probably be a robot. Most were left confused regarding the pronunciation of such a strange name and theories starting popping up about what it could mean.
The majority of the memes revolved around the idea that the child was not human but rather a robot of some sort.
Will baby Musk pass the bot detection test?
Perhaps the newborn also has superpowers, namely levitation?
People also trolled the baby saying it probably doesn’t need proper sustenance for survival — plugging it into the charging port should be enough.
Grimes eventually explained the meaning of her son’s name in a tweet that Musk ended up having to correct. Grimes blamed the mistake on the post-pregnancy haze and asked for any typos to be excused.
The explanation, however, did not clear up the confusion surrounding how the baby’s name is pronounced out loud.
“She’s great at names,” Musk said while explaining that it was Grimes who came up with it. Well, that statement is clearly up for debate.
This is not Grimes’ first rodeo with unconventional names, as in May 2018 she announced her intention to legally change her first name from Claire to just an italic lowercase c. She dabbles in a lot of cyberpunk and futuristic fantasy aesthetics, which shows in her persona and her genre-defying music. Meanwhile, Musk is known for his love of memes and strange tweets. As the couple is famous for their eccentricity and constant trolling, Twitterati were confused as to the legitimacy of the name.
But it seemed like the couple was not joking around. Grimes told an Instagram user that the name is pronounced as “X A I”. However, Musk offered an entirely different pronunciation. On the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, Musk said it was pronounced “X Ash Archangel”, with the Archangel part referencing the Lockheed A-12 aircraft. Either way, netizens were less than impressed.
Being born in 2020 which is arguably one of the worst years in history, combined with being cursed with such a name? That kid is going to hurt bad.
Name / Formula / Mathematical equation?
Netizens trolled Musk a lot, saying “Elon doesn’t like seeing his baby grow, he likes seeing his AI develop” and “X Æ A-12 is not gonna have any birthday parties… just OS updates”
The kid probably communicates in binary code too.
People claim to be having a headache just by looking at the complicated name and are already feeling bad for future teachers and Starbucks employees who will have to pronounce it.
Netizens also likened the name to that of a spaceship, a particularly strong wifi password, and even… a keyboard smash.
Nagpur Police also joined in on the jokes.
“X Æ A-12 sharing is caring”
This is probably the only benefit of having such a name.
Just when it seemed like there was no hope left for the baby boy, people found out that California law prevents parents from adding numbers or symbols to a baby’s name on the birth certificate. This led to users thinking that the whole debacle was just elaborate trolling on the couple’s part and the kid would be spared.
But their relief was short-lived as Grimes responded to a user saying that they changed the baby’s name to “X Æ A-Xii”, which created a new wave of confusion and of course, memes. In the same comment, she also replied, “Roman numerals. Looks better tbh.”
A week after birth, Elon’s mother Maye posted this picture of her son and grandson, in which she calls the baby boy “X”.
It looks like the name is being shortened to just (the unknown variable) “X”, probably because the parents don’t know how to pronounce it either.
Regardless, the kid will undoubtedly be the target of memes for years to come. Let’s hope his name does not prove to be too traumatic for him.