Grimes and Elon Musk changed their daughter's name. Why, you ask? The answer lies in the question.
After sharing a rare photo, Grimes announced on Twitter that her one-year-old baby is now going by "Y" or "Why?" or simply, "?."
A symbol for “curiosity, the eternal question, …and such,” Exa Dark Sideræ's new name has raised questions for many. If you were wondering if the government will recognize the name “?,” they won’t. Grimes answered that one for you.
The accompanying photo also leaves much up to the imagination. Showing both Grimes and Y in red onesies with matching bleached yellow-green hair, Grimes captioned the rare sighting of her newest child with their initials "Y" and "C."
Grimes and Musk quietly welcomed their second child via surrogate in December 2021, announcing the birth of Exa in February, later dropping "Musk" from her last name. The younger sister to X Æ A-12, or “X" for short, as Grimes shared in a Vanity Fair cover story, the two make up the axes on a graph.
X Æ A-12 also underwent an early name change to meet with California guidelines, changing his legal name to X AE A-XII to comply with the law.
As for Y, Grimes first noted the nickname for her then-newborn baby in the same Vanity Fair cover story, where she also fondly referred to her co-parent Elon Musk as E. And according to her caption, Grimes is going by C, the first initial of her given name, Claire Elise Boucher.
Since their split in September 2021, the on-again, off-again couple have co-parented X and Y, and Musk confirmed in his infamous Joe Rogan interview that Grimes is largely in charge of the names.
Photo courtesy of Joe Schildhorn/BFA