- Earlier this week, Grimes gave birth to her first child with Elon Musk.
- On Twitter, Musk revealed the baby's name: X Æ A-12 Musk.
- Appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Musk clarified how the newborn's name should be pronounced.
Since Elon Musk and Grimes announced the name of their newborn baby, X Æ A-12 Musk, the internet's been a little confounded as to how, exactly, to pronounce it. But wonder no longer, friends: Musk appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast Thursday, as People reports, and cleared up the pronunciation.
Musk said X is said "like the letter," while Æ is pronounced like "ash"—which means the baby's name probably sounds something like "Exash A-12." The "Exash" portion, Musk said, was Grimes' choice; she "mostly came up with the name," he revealed, adding, "She's great at names."
The "A-12" component of the newborn's name, however, came from Musk, based on the CIA reconnaissance aircraft of the same name. "The Archangel-12, the precursor to the SR-71, the coolest plane ever," he said."
Even with the pronunciation clarified, Musk and Grimes still face a further obstacle regarding X Æ A-12: The state of California won't accept it. Family law attorney David Glass told People that a birth certificate bearing the couple's chosen name is very likely to be rejected. "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."
If the birth certificate was filled out "with the odd numbers, dashes and symbols, it will be submitted and then rejected and they'll be asked to submit it again," Glass said. "They have an opportunity to appeal the rejection of the birth certificate application but it's unlikely that it will be granted because, again, California ... has been struggling with using symbols."
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