![Grimes Explains Inspiration Behind Her and Elon Musk's Daughter Exa Dark Siderael’s Name](/https/www.usmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Grimes-Explains-Inspiration-Behind-Her-Elon-Musks-Daughter-Exa-Dark-Sideraels-Name.jpg?w=1000&quality=78&strip=all)
Meet Exa! Three months after Grimes and Elon Musk welcomed their baby girl via surrogate, the singer is breaking down the unique name.
“It’s fire,” the England native, whose real name is Claire Boucher, told Vanity Fair in an interview published on Thursday, March 10. “Her full name is Exa Dark Sideræl.”
The little one’s first name refers to exaFLOPs, a supercomputing term defining the ability to perform 1 quintillion floating-point operations per second, she explained. As for Exa’s middle name, Grimes told the outlet that it honors “the unknown.”
The songwriter noted, “People fear it but truly it’s the absence of photons. Dark matter is the beautiful mystery of our universe.”
The “Oblivion” singer went on to call Sideræl a “more elven spelling” of sidereal, which is “the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time.” She added that the moniker also pays homage to Lord of the Rings character Galadriel.
Grimes actually “was fighting” Musk, 50, for a different name — Odysseus Musk. “A girl named Odysseus is my dream,” she gushed.
Exa joins big brother X AE A X-II, whom Grimes and her on-again, off-again boyfriend welcomed in May 2020.
“X, the unknown variable,” the new mom told her Twitter followers of her baby boy’s name at the time. “Æ, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence). A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent + (A = Archangel, my favorite song) (metal rat).”
Grimes added, “I think it sounds like the name of the main character in the story. I hope he vibes with that. OK, going back into the pain/ beauty reverie for [some] time, just came on to add my thoughts. Peace to all.”
Later that same month, Musk made headlines when he struggled to pronounce the newborn’s name during a “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast interview.
“First of all, my partner is the one who, mostly, actually came up with the name,” the SpaceX CEO clarified at the time. “I mean it’s just X, the letter X. And then the Æ is pronounced like ‘ash.’”
The South Africa native’s explanation differed from his partner’s, as Grimes previously wrote via Instagram, “It’s just X, like the letter X. Then A.I. Like how you said the letter A then I.”
He and Grimes began dating in 2018. While they announced their split in September 2021, the visual artist clarified on Thursday that she calls Musk her “boyfriend” and they live separately.