After being forced to change their firstborn's name from X Æ A-12 to X Æ A-XII thanks to California law, Grimes and Elon Musk have taken it upon themselves to rename their second child, formerly known as Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, who will henceforth go by "Y."
Grimes revealed the change in a tweet when she posted photos of Y and herself in matching red jumpsuits with the caption "Y 🐉 C," representing their respective initials. As the musician born Claire Boucher explained in a subsequent tweet, "She's Y now, or 'Why?' or just '?' (But the government won't recognize that). curiosity, the eternal question, .. and such."
At 15 months old, Y thankfully hasn't had a ton of time to get used to her birth name, though as accidentally revealed in March 2022, Grimes has been using the nickname "Y" for her since she was born.
Vanity Fair journalist Devin Gordon profiled Grimes shortly after Y's birth, explaining the child's original name in a lengthy and freewheeling cover story:
Exa is a reference to the supercomputing term exaFLOPS (the ability to perform 1 quintillion floating-point operations per second). Dark, meanwhile, is "the unknown. People fear it but truly it's the absence of photons. Dark matter is the beautiful mystery of our universe." [Grimes] texts me a voice memo with the pronunciation of Sideræl —"sigh-deer-ee-el" — which she calls "a more elven" spelling of sidereal, "the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time." It's also a nod to her favourite Lord of the Rings character, the powerful Galadriel, who "chooses to abdicate the ring."
At least "Y" is easier to explain? See Grimes's tweets on the name change below.
Grimes revealed the change in a tweet when she posted photos of Y and herself in matching red jumpsuits with the caption "Y 🐉 C," representing their respective initials. As the musician born Claire Boucher explained in a subsequent tweet, "She's Y now, or 'Why?' or just '?' (But the government won't recognize that). curiosity, the eternal question, .. and such."
At 15 months old, Y thankfully hasn't had a ton of time to get used to her birth name, though as accidentally revealed in March 2022, Grimes has been using the nickname "Y" for her since she was born.
Vanity Fair journalist Devin Gordon profiled Grimes shortly after Y's birth, explaining the child's original name in a lengthy and freewheeling cover story:
Exa is a reference to the supercomputing term exaFLOPS (the ability to perform 1 quintillion floating-point operations per second). Dark, meanwhile, is "the unknown. People fear it but truly it's the absence of photons. Dark matter is the beautiful mystery of our universe." [Grimes] texts me a voice memo with the pronunciation of Sideræl —"sigh-deer-ee-el" — which she calls "a more elven" spelling of sidereal, "the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time." It's also a nod to her favourite Lord of the Rings character, the powerful Galadriel, who "chooses to abdicate the ring."
At least "Y" is easier to explain? See Grimes's tweets on the name change below.
She's Y now, or "Why?" or just "?" (But the government won't recognize that). curiosity, the eternal question, .. and such.
— 𝔊𝔯𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 (@Grimezsz) March 23, 2023
