Royal family
Here’s the story behind those reports about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex wanting to legally change their last name.
In her Netflix show With Love, Meghan, Prince Harry’s wife said that she preferred and should be referred to as “Meghan Sussex,” not “Meghan Markle.” But now she and her husband reportedly want their last name to be “Spencer,” which was the duke’s late mother Princess Diana‘s surname.
So what do Harry’s relatives on the Spencer side think of the pair wanting to change their name? Here’s what Princess Diana’s brother, Charles, 9th Earl Spencer said when his nephew shared that plan with him.
Meghan Markle recently insisted she should be called ‘Meghan Sussex’
During an episode of With Love, Meghan when the duchess’s friend, actor Mindy Kaling calls her “Meghan Markle” the former Suits star corrects her and declares that her “Sussex” title, given to her by the late Queen Elizabeth II, is her last name and that she shares that with Harry and their kids.
“It’s so funny too that you keep saying ‘Meghan Markle.’ You know I’m Sussex now,” she told Kaling. “You have kids and you go ‘no, I share my name with my children.’ I didn’t know how meaningful that would be to me; it just means so much. It’s our little family name.”
But now Meghan and Harry are reportedly hoping to adopt Princess Diana’s family name.
The report about the couple wanting to use the Spencer name is also interesting since Meghan recently gushed to People about how special the Sussex name is to her, saying: “It’s our shared name as a family, and I guess I hadn’t recognized how meaningful that would be to me until we had children. I love that that is something that Archie, Lili, H and I all have together. It means a lot to me.”
Moreover, shortly after With Love, Meghan debuted, the former working royal appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show and was all smiles when the host referred to her as “Meghan Sussex.”
Prince Harry reportedly talked to Diana’s brother about changing his last name
Despite Meghan’s insistence that her children’s last name is Sussex, the Express noted that Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet’s surnames are still “Mountbatten-Windsor” and that “the Mountbatten-Windsor surname is available to all descendants of the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. It combines the royal family’s name of Windsor and the late Duke of Edinburgh’s [Prince Philip] adopted surname of Mountbatten, which he took from his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, when he renounced his Greek and Danish royal titles in 1947.”
The Daily Mail reported that when Prince Harry went to his Uncle Charles (Diana’s brother) to discuss the name change, he was told that “the legal hurdles were insurmountable.”
According to a source, “[Harry and Charles, 9th Earl Spencer] had a very amicable conversation and Spencer advised him against taking such a step.”
The outlet stressed that it would further deepen the rift between the duke and his family as well and would be “particularly hurtful” to his father, King Charles, who “cherishes” the Mountbatten-Windsor name.
