Elon Musk and Grimes change name of daughter Exa Dark Sideræl to a question and reveal its hidden meaning
ELON Musk and Grimes have changed the name of their daughter to a question – with a touching and techy hidden meaning.
The former couple, who split last March and share two kids, are ditching their one-year-old’s moniker Exa Dark Sideræl for something more simple.
Grimes revealed her youngest child with the Tesla tycoon is now called either Y, Why, or ? while catching up with fans.
The Canadian singer, 35, admitted the government would not officially acknowledge the swap, but celebrated it all the same.
She shared a snap of her and her daughter wearing matching red outfits while “channelling Goku” – a character from Dragon Ball Z.
After captioning the post “Y C” with a dragon emoji in the middle, fans were keen to find out more about the little girl’s name.
Grimes told her 1.3million followers: “She’s Y now, or “Why?” or just “?” (But the government won’t recognize that).”
The mum-of-two, who also shares son X Æ A-XII, 2, with Musk, then revealed the hidden meaning behind her daughter’s new name.
She said it is meant to represent “curiosity, the eternal question, .. and such.”
Musk’s daughter was previously known as Y for short, but the nickname has now trumped the tot’s original moniker.
Sideræl, which Grimes pronounced “sigh-deer-ee-el,” is a “more elven” spelling of sidereal, the “true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time,” Grimes said.
She explained in an interview with Vanity Fair in April of last year that Exa refers to the supercomputing term exaFLOPS, while Dark refers to “the unknown.”
“People fear it but truly it’s the absence of photons. Dark matter is the beautiful mystery of our universe,” Grimes explained.
According to the Kill V Maim singer, the name choice also references her favorite Lord of the Rings character, Galadriel, who she noted “chooses to abdicate the ring.”
Grimes and Musk were previously forced to tweak their son’s name X Æ A-12 to X Æ A-Xii because California law forbids the use of numbers in a legal name.
The name appeared to be partially inspired by one of the songs from 33-year-old Grimes’ last album – 4ÆM.
The parents have disagreed on its pronunciation, with them both publicly stating it is said in different ways.
Grimes previously explained on Instagram: “It’s just X, like the letter X. Then A.I. Like how you said the letter A then I.”
But Musk told Joe Rogan on his podcast: “I mean it’s just X, the letter X. And then, the Æ is, like, pronounced “Ash”… and then, A-12, A-12 is my contribution.”
He said that Grimes “is the one that actually, mostly, came up with the name”, adding: “Yeah, she’s great at names.”
Their son was born in May 2020, after the singer experienced a hemorrhage during her pregnancy.
Shortly after the birth of their first child, Grime said she was “recovering from surgery and barely alive.”
Their daughter was subsequently born via surrogate— a “few months after she and the tech mogul had broken up after three years together.”
Tech billionaire Musk already has five sons with his former wife, Justine Wilson.
One of his children, Xavier, filed a petition to change her gender in June 2022 as she wants to be unrelated to her biological dad.
Xavier Alexander Musk filed the paperwork in California on April 18 to change her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson.
She said she’s changing her name because she “no longer lives with or wish to be related” to her biological father “in any way, shape or form”.
After Musk and his first wife divorced, he married English actress Talulah Riley in 2010 and remarried her in 2013 after the pair briefly divorced in 2012.