- The musician
Grimes has officially given birth to her first child withtech titanElon Musk , and the pair confirmed that they're naming their baby boyX Æ A-12 . - Unsurprisingly, the unique and possibly non-registrable name has fueled a lot of
memes , including a popular one about how the name is actually pronounced "Kyle." - The "Kyle" pronunciation has some people fooled, but Grimes clarified that the name is actually pronounced like the letters "X," "A," then "I" in an Instagram comment.
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In the meme economy, the price of "X Æ A-12" is steadily on the rise. At first glance, what looks like a string of random letters, numbers, and symbols is actually what Grimes and Elon Musk say is the name of their newborn boy.
The Tesla CEO first confirmed late Monday night that his girlfriend, musician Claire "c" Boucher (AKA Grimes), had given birth to a healthy baby boy. In the same thread of tweets, he also said they named him X Æ A-12, which was met with immediate confusion since people thought it might be a joke or a riddle pointing to the real name.
But Grimes confirmed in her own tweet that her first child's name is X Æ A-12. Musk has five other boys already, and they all have comparatively normal names (Damian, Griffin, Xavier, Saxon, and Kai), but Grimes explained that the "X" stands for "the unknown variable," "Æ" is her "elven spelling" of "Ai (love &/or Artifical intelligence)," and "A-12" is the precursor to her and Musk's favorite aircraft, the SR-71 blackbird.
—꧁ ༒ Gℜiꪔ⃕es ༒꧂ 小仙女 (@Grimezsz) May 6, 2020
But on Reddit, a similar post dissecting the name theorizes that it's pronounced "Kyle," and that meme has taken off like wildfire, prompting a lot of copy-cat memes on Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok.
—irhamzin (@irhamzin1) May 6, 2020
The initial "copypasta" about the "Kyle" pronunciation appears to have originated in a Reddit comment from the user /u/Gausd, and it's been screenshotted and copied-and-pasted across the internet, sometimes accompanied by memes like "All that for a 'x'?" from the movie "Avengers: Endgame."
Popular Instagram meme accounts like "@shitheadsteve" have reposted variations of the "Kyle" pronunciation, in their case receiving well over 100,000 likes on the post. People have also tweeted that the name is pronounced "Kyle," based off the Reddit decoding attempt, and some TikToks are also making the claim.
—Sob Ross (@sob_ross) May 7, 2020
The memes are clever, but Grimes confirmed the actual pronunciation of her son's name, and it isn't "Kyle."
The way the original poster came up with "Kyle" was by determining that each part of X Æ A-12 is a clue. They assumed that "X" stood for the Greek letter "Chi," pronounced "Ki," that "Æ" is pronounced "Ai" like Grimes said in her tweet, and that the A-12 refers to the twelfth letter of the alphabet, "L." You can surmise that "Kyle" comes out of that jumble, but it's a bit of a reach, given that Grimes already stated "A-12" references a plane, not a letter.
Furthermore, X Æ A-12 may not be Boucher and Musk's actual son's name, because California won't register a baby's name that includes symbols, but even if legally has to be something else for the baby to obtain a Social Security number, the pair insists that they're actually calling him that. And Grimes even gave away the real pronunciation in an Instagram comment of her own late Wednesday night.
Boucher wrote that the name is pronounced like the letters "X," "A," and "then I" in succession, so if you were saying it all in one go, you'd say "Ecks, aye, eye." It's extremely unconventional and most responders haven't been impressed, but it's not entirely unprecedented, either.
Back in May 2018, Grimes announced her intention to legally change her own first name from Claire to the letter "c" in an italic, lowercase font. Given her history, it's way more likely that Grimes would call her baby "X" or even "XAI" as opposed to something normal like "Kyle." As to whether Boucher and Musk will get away with legally naming their son X Æ A-12 or not, we'll have to wait and see what the couple says about the name going forward.
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- How to pronounce 'X Æ A-12,' the name Elon Musk tweeted he and Grimes gave their new baby
- Elon Musk tweeted out a string of characters claiming it was his new baby boy's name, and the memes about him and Grimes' parenting have already begun
- Elon Musk put a tattoo filter over the first photo of his new baby with Grimes