Elon Musk is currently making headlines around the world, but if his father had had his way, apparently the headlines would be about ‘Nice Musk’.
Yes, the Tesla CEO, and senior advisor to US President Donald Trump, was almost named Nice after the French Riviera town. The reason? It’s the place where Elon Musk was conceived!
According to the 2023 biography of Musk, by Walter Isaacson, Elon’s parents – Maye and Errol – conceived him whilst on honeymoon in Nice and subsequently wanted to call him Nice. His mother Maye, a model and dietician, also told Isaacson that during their honeymoon she almost left her new husband after he bought Playboy magazines in France (because they were banned back home in South Africa), but due to falling pregnant in Nice, they stayed together. “There was no going back now,” she told the author.
Ultimately Elon was not called Nice and was instead named after Maye’s grandfather Elon, to keep the family happy. Errol also told Isaacson that Elon is the fictional title given to rulers of Mars in a science fiction novel (which could explain Musk’s preoccupation with flying to Mars). His middle name is Reeve, after his mum’s grandmother.
Elon’s parents divorced when he was eight, after having two other children, Elon’s brother Kimbal and sister Tosca. (Both are also entrepreneurs. Kimbal co-owns The Kitchen Restaurant Group and has shares in Tesla worth around $500-million in February 2025; and Tosca is CEO of Passionflix, a streaming service with romantic content.)
Musk has come a long way since his French start in life. He’s now the wealthiest person in the world with an estimated $364.2-billion according to Forbes (25 February 2025). Apart from being CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, the 53-year-old billionaire is also the owner of X (formerly Twitter) and has been tasked with overseeing the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) effort in the US where he has a ‘special government employee’ status.
After being conceived in France, Musk was born and brought up in South Africa, leaving the country when he was 18 to avoid compulsory military service for the then Apartheid government. He has since acquired both Canadian and US citizenship, and retains his SA citizenship too. (There is a petition in Canada at the moment to revoke his Canadian citizenship.)
Nice is the fifth largest city in France and capital of the Alpes-Maritimes department. (It’s also where Angelina Jolie gave birth to twins Knox and Vivienne in 2008, at Lenval hospital on the Promenade des Anglais, with dad Brad Pitt at her bedside.)
