I think this picking on poor little Earth A.E. Q-45 has gone too far.
Agreed. Once you’ve got a Q-36, you can blow up the entire Earth and why would you need to go any further than that?
I’m not sure where the line is drawn between unusual and weird, but a name that can’t legally be registered, that the mother can’t spell, and that can’t be pronounced by anyone, yeah, that’s weird.
The A-12 plane that the kid is actually named after, was called the Oxcart. It fits perfectly.
That part doesn’t bother me. If his name were “John H. Musk”, you’d pronounce the letter as “aitch”, the name of the letter. The Æ is probably just the initial of some common ordinary name, like Æthelbehrt or Æikinæfr.
According to a Guardian article from this January:
So whatever Elon says the kid’s name is, its birth certificate was a different matter.
I heartily agree 
(mom to “Dweezil” and “Moon Unit”… which are the source for my username, I am NOT a Zappa in real life).
Along those lines, I was thinking “Ogee” - or perhaps alternatively spelled “Ogie” ala Ogie Ogilthorpe
It’s illegal to name your kid François or John-Paul or Zoë in California? Or to use common Mexican names like Daña or José?
That’s not right.
Many things about California are just not right, this is merely one of them.
John-Paul is ok since hyphens are allowed, but your other examples are indeed disallowed. I can’t find a complete list but apparently other states have similar restrictions. Wikipedia says “Some states (for example, Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, North Carolina, Oregon) allow accents and some non-English letters in birth certificates and other documents.” The fact that they enumerate only 5 states that allow accents might imply that there are a bunch that don’t.
I’m going to make some wild-talking-out-my-ass guesses here: I suspect the California regs on that are old and possibly out-of-date. I suspect that there’s probably some limitation in the character sets that old crunky archaic computer systems can work with.
CA is a diverse state, and I imagine that one of two things might be true:
Either:
(a) There are people with names with accent or other special symbols, and they are actually accepted, OR
(b) If anyone actually makes a fuss over this, I’ll bet they find a way to make it work.
I don’t know if any of the above is true. But in these diverse times, I would think that if CA really doesn’t accept diverse names and someone wants to raise a fuss, it would be a medium-size scandal and make a lot of headlines.
Names with accents certainly ought to be acceptable, and I can’t see how the state could get away with not handling names like those if someone wants to push the issue.
Now: What about names that the Federal Government will recognize? What kind of names can you register for a Social Security number? What kind of names can you put on your IRS tax returns? Will your direct deposits happen smoothly if your bank account says Muñoz but your tax refund says Munoz?
Unless the law is successfully challenged, it’s illegal to put accent marks on the birth certificate in California. But according to this legal article, a person in California successfully changed their legal name to Darren QX Bean!, so it would appear using non-alphabetical items is legal in California. Other courts in the U.S. have accepted name changes like GoVeg.com or Jennifer 8 Lee, but rejected 1069. Of course, in non-legal contexts you can use virtually anything you want.
There’s always a potential difference between a person’s “real” name and their legal name. By grandmother went by “Corrine” and when I saw that letters to her were addressed to “Cornelia” and asked her she said something like that’s what the government says her name is, but her real name is Corrine. So just because you can’t legally name someone something doesn’t mean that can’t be their real name. This sort of thing is true for absolutely everyone when dealing with countries that use a writing system different than the one they were born in. If I visited Japan, they’d probably write my name in katakana like they do with all foreigners, even if I’ve chosen specific kanji that would fit the mangled pronunciation they would give it, so even my “real name” in Japanese would be different from my legal name in Japan.
As pointed out above, the original name did not conform to California requirements, so the name has now been changed - to X Æ A-Xii. Much better.
Zash-a-zee?
Zayazee.