Why Prince Harry Reportedly Wanted to Change His and Meghan Markle’s Last Name

Much ado has been made about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s surname as of late, with the Duchess of Sussex declaring to friend Mindy Kaling—very clearly, we might add—that her last name is Sussex now in season 1 of Netflix’s With Love, Meghan. (Why do we still use Markle, you may ask? Well, it really boils down to the fact that we want our stories to be found and read by you—the same reason we still refer to Kate Middleton as such initially in our headlines and stories about her.)

Harry and Meghan’s two kids are now known as Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet but, upon their respective 2019 and 2021 births, were known as Archie Mountbatten-Windsor and Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor. (That last name is used on their birth certificates.) Mountbatten-Windsor is the surname of the royal family following the 1947 marriage of then Princess Elizabeth (who hailed from the House of Windsor) and Prince Philip, whose surname was Mountbatten; the royal family began using the combined Mountbatten-Windsor as its surname around 1960, and the first time it appeared on an official document was when Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips in 1973, 13 years later. 

According to multiple outlets, it seems that at one point Harry was planning to drop the surname of Mountbatten-Windsor and, before the family landed on Sussex, asked his uncle Charles Spencer—the younger brother of his mother, Princess Diana—if they should use Spencer going forward. (Spencer, of course, is Diana’s maiden name before she married Prince Charles on July 29, 1981.)

The Telegraph reported that “During a rare visit to Britain, Prince Harry is said to have sought advice from his uncle Earl Spencer about whether to assume his mother’s surname.” But, the outlet reported, Charles advised against the move because of “legal hurdles,” the outlet said, citing The Mail on Sunday. 

“They had a very amicable conversation and Spencer advised him against taking such a step,” a friend of Harry’s told The Mail on Sunday.

According to The Telegraph, Harry’s “apparent desire to abandon the [Mountbatten-Windsor] name speaks to the growing rift with his family.”

Harry apparently heeded his uncle’s advice and instead opted to use Sussex for his family surname, following the late Queen Elizabeth granting Harry and Meghan the titles of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on their May 19, 2018 royal wedding day. In episode 2 of With Love, Meghan—released in March—Meghan corrected Kaling after the latter called her “Meghan Markle” on the show, with Meghan saying, “It’s so funny you keep saying ‘Meghan Markle’—you know I’m Sussex now.”

“You have kids and you go, ‘No, I share my name with my children,’” Meghan added. “I didn’t know how meaningful it would be to me, but it just means so much to go, ‘This is our family name. Our little family name.’”

Meghan told People in March of the Sussex surname, “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.”

“I think as the kids get older, they’re so excited about, ‘Oh my gosh, Mama and Papa, how did you meet?’” Meghan told the publication. “I think that will come with time as they get older, but for right now a huge part of our love story is that we share the name Sussex.”

Surnames for members of the royal family have always been confusing—and fluid, depending on titles. For example, Harry’s surname while growing up was Wales, reflective of his father—the former Prince Charles—and his title during Harry’s youth as Prince of Wales. Now, though, as his older brother Prince William is the current Prince of Wales, his kids Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis use the surname Wales—whereas before William took over the title in September 2022 they used the surname Cambridge, reflective of William and Kate’s Duke and Duchess of Cambridge titles given to them upon marriage by Queen Elizabeth.

When Archie and Lilibet were born—before their grandfather became King on September 8, 2022—they were known as Master Archie Mountbatten-Windsor and Miss Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor. But, when Charles took the throne, they were afforded the titles of prince and princess, and Harry and Meghan used their kids’ royal titles for the first time in March 2023, when they announced Lilibet’s christening. Archie and Lilibet’s names have been updated to Prince Archie of Sussex and Princess Lilibet of Sussex on the royal family’s official website, and the Sussex family of four have adopted the use of the surname, following the royal tradition of using titles as last names often used by members of the royal family.