Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala. Photo / Getty Images
One of billionaire Elon Musk's children has filed legal documents in an effort to change her name, saying she no longer wants to be related to him.
Musk's daughter, who was named Xavier Alexander Musk at birth, turned 18 in April and wants to change her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson, TMZ reports.
Wilson is the surname of Vivian's mother and Musk's ex-wife Justine, who was married to him from 2000 to 2008.
The change is partly, but not entirely, to conform to her gender identity. The legal documents, filed with the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles County, include a section requiring her to give a "reason for name change".
"Gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form," she explains.
A hearing on Vivian's request is scheduled to take place on Friday.
Neither Vivian nor her father has spoken publicly about their relationship. Musk has previously said that he "absolutely" supports trans people "but all these pronouns are an aesthetic nightmare".
That statement came after he shared a meme mocking people for putting their pronouns in their social media profiles, sparking accusations of transphobia.
Musk married Vivian's mother, a Canadian author, in January of 2000. They had a son, Nevada, in 2002, who tragically died at 10 weeks old from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The couple subsequently had twins – Vivian and her brother Griffin – and triplets named Kai, Saxon and Damian, who are now 16.
Musk and Wilson share custody of the five children. He also has two children with the singer Grimes, with whom he had a relationship from 2018 until recently.
The Tesla and SpaceX boss has yet to comment on his daughter's case. As US media reported on it today, he was musing about cheese on Twitter.
Since the end of her relationship with Musk, Grimes has been romantically linked to activist Chelsea Manning, the former US Army analyst who spent years in prison after leaking sensitive military documents to WikiLeaks.
The interviewer brought up some of Musk's activity on social media, noting that he "began tweeting more memes attacking the use of pronouns, and the transgender community, and liberal attitudes towards gender" around the time the rumours that Grimes and Manning were dating surfaced".
"Those seemed like subtweets about you, and that struck me as pretty bizarre," said The Daily Beast interviewer.
"Yeah, sure," said Manning.
"The one thing I will say is, he around that time definitely seemed transphobic, and rumour and speculation aside, that's off-limits.