Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk and singer Grimes might have to hold off on using the name X Æ A-12 for their new baby since it might be illegal.
California’s state rules call for names that only use 26 alphabetical characters for the English language. With that in mind, a name like X Æ A-12 wouldn’t work on multiple fronts. It has “Æ” — the elven character for love and/or artificial intelligence — and the number 12.
No numbers, special characters or dash can be used for names, family law attorney David Glass told People magazine.
“In California, you can only use the ‘26 characters’ of the English language in your baby name,” he 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.”
According to CNN, this might also pose problems for people with a name like “José,” which has an accent mark at the end.
The couple announced the birth of their baby Tuesday. Grimes explained the meaning of the name in a follow-up tweet, which I wrote about for the Deseret News.
According to Grimes, the X in the name stands for “the unknown variable.” She said A-12 represents an aircraft that was a precursor to the SR-17 (the couple’s favorite aircraft). The A also stands for Archangel,” which is Grimes’ favorite song.
The name, then, would translate as: “The unknown variable of love and/or artificial intelligence aircraft.”
Musk later corrected Grimes on the name, though. In a tweeted reply, he mentioned the SR-17 was supposed to be SR-71.