Grimes and Elon Musk broke the internet earlier this week when they announced the name of their newborn. On May 5th, they welcomed little X Æ A-12 to the internet, and a universal “huh?” was heard worldwide. In not so surprising news, it turns out that California law prohibits the registration of a legal name consisting of symbols and numbers. Family law attorney David Glass informed People that while the couple’s choice of name doesn’t technically break any laws, it wouldn’t be accepted as valid by the state.
“In California, you can only use the ’26 characters’ of the English language in your baby name,” Glass said. “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.”
The eccentric Grimes baffled fans with her explanation behind her baby’s name, providing an almost equation-like breakdown of each character’s meaning. It would seem Grimes and Musk haven’t even come to a clear consensus of what each letter would stand for, as the tech tycoon offered a different explanation behind the meaning when speaking to Joe Rogan on his podcast.
In February, Grimes announced during a YouTube livestream that she and Musk wouldn’t label their newborn by gender, and instead would let the child decide. “I don’t want to gender them in case that’s not how they feel in their life,” she told fans. “I don’t know, I just feel like it doesn’t need to be known.”
It looks like baby X Æ A-12 will be following in the footsteps of Prince, who famously changed his name to the “Love Symbol” in 1993. Ƭ̵̬̊ walked so X Æ A-12 could run.
H/T: NME
