Palace and granddad need to butt out of baby’s naming
Thankfully, it will be years before Lilibet ‘‘Lili’’ Diana MountbattenWindsor is old enough to understand anything of the bizarre scandal surrounding her birth this week. The brand-new child of Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, has been named after her great-grandmother, the Queen. Specifically, the diminutive given to Elizabeth II as a child by her father George VI. Little Elizabeth, the story goes, couldn’t quite get her tongue around her own name, and so ‘‘Lilibet’’ it became.
A sweet and thoughtful idea, you might think. If I were Nana Regina, I’d be well pleased. But as with everything to do with the Sussexes, the British media have managed to suck the last little dewdrop of delight out of even this, the most joyful of occasions.
As if Meghan doesn’t have enough to wrestle with already.
Post-birth physical effects, sleepless nights, breastfeeding again; staff or no staff, she’s a new mother and new mothers need no further nitwittery in their lives. But hold up, here comes her attention-seeking father once more, due to spout off in a 60 Minutes Australia ‘‘exclusive’’ tonight. In the promo, this paragon of fatherly concern promises to air the ‘‘dirty laundry’’ on his relationship with his daughter (newsflash – he doesn’t have much of one, largely due to his own thoughtless sabotage).
The time for selected Markle family members to shut up and slink off has long passed, but this timing, just days after the Duchess gave birth, is particularly heinous.
And this is on top of the largely manufactured ‘‘scandal’’ surrounding the baby’s name. Tempting as it was to just allow your eyes to roll right out of your head, by Tuesday the story was everywhere, with reckons blowing this way and that from such illustrious news outlets as the BBC.
The Beeb claims the Queen was not consulted about the use of her nickname. That has been disputed by other media including The Sunday Times and The Telegraph, and by Harry himself, who’s called in the lawyers to try to kill the story off.
But by the time that letter hit editors’ desks across Britain, ‘‘palace sources’’ had moved on to more creative nitpickery. No matter when it was that Harry called his gran, or whether she loved the idea, the use of Lilibet is apparently some kind of slight to Her Maj. Lilibet was used only by close members of the family, and is therefore off-limits, the reasoning appears to go. No, more than that, they appear to be suggesting it’s not Harry’s place to be borrowing such a sacred moniker for his child.
It’s possible all of the above is made up – one unnamed ‘‘palace source’’ has become a
flimsy basis upon which to base anything – but if true, it would fly in the face of traditions in many countries. There are entire cultures – from Romanians to Nigerians to Afrikaners – who have used grandparents’ names for new babies as a matter of course. I’ve seen grandparents scrap disgracefully over the honour of a namecheck in their progeny’s progeny. The cleverest new parents find a way to mash several together so everyone gets a look-in (actor Charlize Theron is said to be one famous example).
Naming babies is a serious endeavour, as anyone who’s chosen even a slightly unusual name and has the emotional bruises to show for it, will tell you. There’s scope to fall foul not only of officialdom (the Department of Internal Affairs releases a list of rejected names for birth certificates every year and rather ironically, some of the most-rejected in 2020 were Majesty, Prince, Princess, Queen and Royal) but your wha¯ nau too.
When I was pregnant for the first time, we decided early on the child’s name would be Paris. No family connection, no particular inspiration, we just liked it. We soon found out how much others did not. On one memorable afternoon, my sainted mother (with whom I have never argued – well not since my teens anyhow) phoned me from Australia. The conversation was short, and went like this: Mum: Hello. You can’t call her Paris. Me, astounded: I beg your pardon? Mum: Michael Jackson’s just announced his daughter will be named Paris, you’ll be a national laughing stock.
Me: Uh, bye mum.
She came around, of course she did. Within a couple of days most people can’t imagine the kid being called anything else. We had a brief scare a few years on, when Paris Hilton dominated gossip headlines for what felt like decades, but every time some no-filter acquaintance tried to wind me up, I would say ‘‘no-one’s going to be talking about Paris Hilton by the time my daughter’s in her teens’’. How right I was.
And at least we chose something and stuck to it. I was supposed to be a Sarah, until my parents – a couple of days before my mother went into labour – were convinced by a bunch of friends at a boozy dinner party to change it to Alison.
I asked Twitter whether anyone else had faced the chill wind of disapproval from family or friends for their choice, and boy-ohgirl-oh-non-binary-young-person, did I get some hackle-raising replies. One poor dude sent an email around his workplace announcing his happy news, only to have a woman in accounts reply thus: ‘‘You’ve saddled him with a name you’ll always regret’’. What a charmer.
Gabby’s father misheard her and told everyone the child’s name was Bonnie (it was Alice, but Bonnie stuck). Simon was told his daughter would be gay because he’d spelt Robin with an ‘‘i’’ (way too much to unpack there.)
Keeping the name a close-held secret until after the birth is the way to go, many told me; some even choose decoy names. Paul, for example, had months of fun with ‘‘Jasmine’’ and ‘‘Arborio’’, ‘‘after our favourite rice’’. I’ve seen this backfire; a colleague in London in the early ‘90s referred to his unborn as Zebedee, after the Magic Roundabout character, for seven months – then couldn’t come up with another option after his birth (the boy’s known as Zeb, which is nice).
The point is, naming a child is both an important job – for the parents, not nosey aunties, workmates or strangers – and not the end of the world. Lilibet Diana MountbattenWindsor will be known as Lili, and the only people who have a right to comment about that lovely name are the two people who named her.
Staff or no staff, Meghan’s a new mother and new mothers need no further nitwittery in their lives.