Baby X AE A-XII isn’t like other children. Not only is he the son of the weirdest celeb couple – Grimes and Elon Musk, in case you didn’t know – but, at the age of one, he’s already making “super fire” music, and now it turns out he’s too cool to refer to his mother as ‘mama’.
In an interview with Vogue, filmed as she was getting ready for the Met Gala, Grimes revealed that X – as she calls him – chooses to call her by her first name, Claire. “Being a mother feels weird to say,” she explained, “I don’t identify with that word. Which is also weird because X, he says ‘Claire’ but he doesn’t say ‘mama’.”
“Maybe he can sense my distaste for the word mother,” Grimes continued. “I don’t even know why I have a distaste for it. I respect it. I just can’t identify with it.”
Grimes and Musk welcomed X AE A-XII into the world in May 2020. He was originally named X Æ A-12, the meaning of which Grimes explained on Twitter: “X, the unknown variable. Æ, my elven spelling of AI (love and/or artificial intelligence). A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favourite aircraft).”
Unfortunately, the pair couldn’t legally name their child that, as California law forbids the use of numbers and symbols in names, so instead they settled on X AE A-XII, with Grimes saying: “Roman numerals. Looks better TBH.”
In January, Grimes said that becoming a mother has made her feel “less hate, more optimism, more creativity, more desire for life, and more respect for women”.
Watch Grimes’ interview with Vogue below, and see her Met Gala look, among the other best 2021 red carpet outfits, here.