Elon Musk’s baby name ‘Seldon Lycurgus’ hints at his Greek-inspired blueprint for America

Elon Musk welcomes 14th youngster, his fourth baby with companion Shivon Zilis

Elon Musk and Neuralink govt Shivon Zilis have welcomed their fourth youngster collectively, and the name they’ve chosen—Seldon Lycurgus—appears to foreshadow a stark, militaristic imaginative and prescient of governance.
Zilis introduced the delivery on X, previously Twitter, on Friday, sharing the information in honor of their daughter Arcadia’s birthday.
“In light of beautiful Arcadia’s birthday, we felt it was better to also just share directly about our wonderful and incredible son Seldon Lycurgus,” she wrote. “Built like a juggernaut, with a solid heart of gold. Love him so much.” Musk appeared to verify the announcement with a coronary heart emoji.

The name Seldon seems to reference Hari Seldon, the mathematician and visionary from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation collection. In the books, Seldon’s groundbreaking work in “psychohistory” permits him to foretell and manipulate the way forward for civilization—an eerie parallel to Musk’s personal aspirations of shaping humanity’s trajectory.
Lycurgus, however, evokes a extra ominous historic precedent, reported the Daily Beast. The legendary Greek lawmaker of the identical name is credited with engineering Sparta’s famously brutal navy society, instilling a life-style of utmost self-discipline, endurance, and social engineering. His insurance policies emphasised inflexible governance, state-mandated procreation, and a philosophy that has been linked to early eugenics beliefs.
“He believed motherhood to be the most important function of freeborn women,” Greek historian Xenophon wrote in Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, describing Lycurgus’ imaginative and prescient of state-controlled breeding. His legal guidelines additionally mandated rigorous bodily coaching for girls, believing that stronger mother and father would produce superior offspring.
Lycurgus’ name has been invoked all through historical past in discussions on authoritarian governance and social management—most controversially in Nazi propaganda, which idealized his Spartan reforms as a mannequin for eugenics and militaristic self-discipline. While some historians debate whether or not Lycurgus was an actual determine or a legendary assemble, his influence on political philosophy is simple.
The name selection is especially placing given Musk’s position as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the place he has launched an aggressive marketing campaign in opposition to authorities “waste.” His and his mom Maye Musk’s vocal advocacy for elevated delivery charges—at the same time as financial circumstances make child-rearing troublesome—aligns with Lycurgus’ perception that procreation needs to be a nationwide obligation.
While Musk has at all times had a penchant for unconventional baby names, Seldon Lycurgus could also be his most revealing one but—a name that not solely nods to grand visions of the long run but in addition whispers of a previous steeped in inflexible management and engineered society.