Who doesn’t like baby name debates? Mix that thoroughly with royals news, and you’ve got pop culture gossip nectar from the top shelf.
We already know Prince Harry, 36, and Meghan Markel, 39, are expecting a baby girl later this summer -- as they announced via a friend’s Instagram post on Valentine’s Day, and gender clarified in their infamous Oprah interview.
So thank the nattering gods that the royal couple have already started hinting out possible names for their little one.
The recently displaced royal couple already noted a couple maybes in April, 2019, on a visit to a grade school when Archie was still a bun in the oven.
After a 7-year-old girl named Megan Dudley spoke with the Duchess of Sussex and discovered that their friends both call them "Meg," she offered a name suggestion for the baby: "I asked her whether she would call her baby Amy if she has a girl, and she said, 'That's a really pretty name, I like it. We'll have to think about it.'”
During the same grade school stop, Harry made mention of the name "Lily," asking a mother how she spelled her daughter's floral name.
As befits such a historically notable name game, it seems the planning went back as far as 2018, when a 12-year old Aussie fan grilled the couple for baby name ideas as they trammed through Melbourne. That said, Meghan didn’t take the little kid’s bait, only responding, "We've been given a long list of names from everyone, we're going to sit down and have a look at them."
Chatting with a fan named “Harriet” -- the female version of the Prince’s moniker -- had Harry offering “That’s a great name!”
Outlets that have more skin in this particular game -- like betting site Ladbrokes -- see “Philippa” as the best possibility, following the death of Prince Philip in April. "The support for baby Philippa is showing no signs of slowing down,” said Jessica O'Reilly of Ladbrokes, “and we've been forced to trim the odds again that it's the name for Harry and Meghan's daughter.”
Though we’re betting the Prince Philip’’s late-in-life controversies might knock those odds down a little. Not to mention, back in 2019, “Archie” was on no one’s betting board.
Using previous family members’ names is definitely a royals thing. Harry's cousins Princess Eugenie and Zara Tindall both paid tribute to their grandfather just before his death by giving their newborn sons the middle name “Philip.”
The obvious contender here though would seem to be “Diana,” after Harry’s late, much-beloved mother, Princess Diana.
Meghan and Harry are already a little older than your average impressionable parents, and they’ve shown a strong independent streak. In the same way that this increasingly rebellious duo have bucked tradition before, we’re guessing they will again.
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