Officially, the official surname for Meghan Markle became the unwieldy Mountbatten-Windsor when she married Prince Harry in 2018, but she isn’t wrong in wanting to use Sussex as her last name instead, after her husband’s dukedom, according to experts on royal titles.
But the Duchess of Sussex’s decision this week to make a point of being referred to by the Sussex surname is raising eyebrows in royal circles, where Buckingham Palace “insiders” say that she appears worried that King Charles, or a future King William, could exercise their power to strip her and her husband of their Sussex royal titles, according to a report in the Daily Mail.
Meghan and Harry are famously estranged from Charles, William, and the rest of the royal family. There also have been calls in Britain to strip the California-based couple of their Duke and Duchess of Sussex titles, following their public criticism of the monarchy and concerns that they are trying to cash in on their royal connections.
“It’s clearly a warning shot,” a palace insider told Daily Mail columnist Richard Eden. The insider was referring to the moment on Meghan’s new lifestyle show, With Love, Meghan, when she welcomed celebrity guest Mindy Kaling into her made-for-TV Montecito kitchen. Meghan visibly bristled at her friend calling her Meghan Markle.
“It’s so funny you keep saying Meghan Markle, you know I’m Sussex now,” a clearly irritated Meghan told Mindy. She said it’s the name she shares with her children, Archie, 5, and Lilibet, 3, which makes it so much more “meaningful.” “This is our family name. Our little family name,” Meghan said.
The video player is currently playing an ad. During interviews with People and her appearance on the Drew Barrymore Show this week, Meghan also emphasized her use of the Sussex surname, the first time she’s ever done that. She told People that the name has taken on added significance since she had children. “I guess I hadn’t recognized how meaningful that would be to me until we had children,” she said. She also was gratified when Barrymore addressed her as Meghan Sussex, the first time she’s ever been publicly addressed in this way, according to People.
To royal insiders, Meghan seemed to be sending the message to her father- and brother-in-law. It is that the Sussex surname means so much to her and Harry that they “should not so much as contemplate stripping them of their titles,” Eden reported.
The surname comes from the Sussex dukedom, which was given to Harry by his late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, on the day he married Meghan. But as Eden pointed out, Charles and subsequent monarchs have the power to take the title away. Royal sources suggested to Eden that this fact could be used to discourage Meghan and Harry from writing, producing or participating in any more tell-all books, Netflix specials, or Oprah Winfrey-style interviews.
Meghan’s insistence on using the Sussex also has created a stir in the UK in other ways because she and Harry actually have a very “limited connection” to the English county of Sussex, located along England’s southeastern coast, reported Daily Mail royal editor Rebecca English. When they were still working royals, Meghan and Harry visited the county just once, and for only six hours while on a whistle-stop tour of towns along the coast.
As reported by the Daily Mail and by People, the official surname for the British royal family, including for Meghan and Harry, is Mountbatten-Windsor. That’s incidentally the last name that Meghan and Harry recorded on the birth certificates for their children Archie and Lilibet, the Daily Mail‘s royal editor reported.
This surname dates back to 1960 when Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, decided that they wanted to give their direct descendants a name that combined her family name, Windsor, with his, which was Mountbatten.
Of course, the hyphenated Mountbatten-Windsor is a bit of a mouthful, and the Daily Mail reported that it’s been a longstanding practice for royal family members to use their dukedoms or other titles as “shorthand surnames.”
For example, Harry was called Harry Wales when he was at school and in the military, as a nod to his father then being the Prince of Wales. Similarly, Harry’s cousins, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, used the surname York, after their father, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.
Because Harry is the Duke of Sussex, “it is perfectly within protocol for him to use Harry Sussex and for his wife to use Meghan Sussex,” Wendy Bosberry-Scott, editor of Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage, told the Daily Mail.
“Typically, where a title is involved, children are registered under both names, as was the case when Prince Archie was registered in 2019; he appears in the indexes of the General Register Office under Sussex and Mountbatten-Windsor,” Bosberry-Scott added.
Unfortunately for Meghan, the media that covers her isn’t likely to start referring to her as Meghan Sussex in headlines or in first or second reference in articles, according to People.
That’s because of SEO, or search engine optimization, which enhances the visibility of web content on search engines like Google. Meghan Markle remains the mostly widely used SEO term associated with the American former TV star.
The same issue applies to Kate Middleton, much to the dismay of fans of Catherine, the Princess of Wales. Both the names Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton built such strong digital footprints when the women first entered the royal spotlight that those names are likely to follow them for the foreseeable future, according to People.
—Martha Ross, The Mercury News (TNS)
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