It’s one of the few things you carry throughout your life that you don’t actually choose. I’m talking about a name, of course — although that may come as a surprise to Lady Gaga and other celebrities who are often better known by their stage names than their given ones.
It might certainly come as a surprise to the former Meghan Markle, whose actual name is Rachel Meghan Markle but who calls herself Meghan. There are two schools of thought about people who rename themselves: They are wildly independent. They are wildly insecure. I myself don’t care for my first or middle names, but I was named for my grandmothers, whose memories I care greatly about honoring. So I wear their names with pride. And when time came for my Confirmation, I chose another name that I liked better and have since added a fourth that is my favorite. You can understand why the Department of Motor Vehicles has a problem with me.
But back to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex — yet another name. She and her husband, Prince Harry, have chosen to name their newborn daughter after his grandmother and mother, Queen Elizabeth II and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Fair enough. Lots of girls, especially first-born daughters, are named as I was after grandmothers or great-grandmothers. It was, however, how they chose to honor Prince Harry’s grandmother that has become the sticking point. Instead of naming their daughter Elizabeth Diana, they named her Lillbet Diana, after the queen’s childhood nickname.
As the story goes, the nickname was based on her own mispronunciation of her name when she was very young. It was then championed by her grandparents, King George V and Queen Mary,; her parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, known as Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother; her sister, Princess Margaret; and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Perhaps some of her contemporary cousins use it as well. Perhaps not. Needless to say, the principle people who called the queen “Lilibet” are, sadly, all gone.
So the question becomes why would you name your child after someone’s intimate nickname that has nothing to do with you? This question gets at the heart of what’s in a name, to borrow from Shakespeare, and that is it is a signifier of a kind of relationship of unequals. When God calls Abram to be the father of a new covenant with him and a new people, he gives him a new name — Abraham. Bestowing a name on someone suggests a certain creativity, yes, but more so a certain seniority, authority, power and even ownership. Lilibet would’ve gone the way of countless childhood monikers — to be recalled only at family gatherings — had her grandfather the king not picked it up. He gave it an imprimatur. Her father gave it parental pride. Her husband gave it romance and ultimately with his passing, poignance.
So the question remains: Why try to co-opt all that? For a kind of control? I don’t think the duke and duchess were seeking control. I think they were seeking to ingratiate after the blowback created by their Oprah interview. But the gesture may have backfired. In suing the BBC for reporting, apparently correctly, that they never sought the queen’s permission to use her nickname but instead presented it as fait accompli, Harry and Meghan may have forced the queen’s hand. Her Majesty — who stole the show at the G7 — “has instructed courtiers to correct any statements which misrepresent her private conversations or those of other senior Royals.”
Whoa, baby. Nobody puts Lilibet in a corner, for in the end while a name may be bestowed on you by someone else, it is you who grow into it and own it. Of course, had Harry and Meghan thought about what they were doing in the first place they might not have wound up in the situation in which they find themselves. You have to feel for them as they were clearly in a bind. Elizabeth Diana are the middle names of Princess Charlotte, daughter of brother and sister-in-law William and Catherine, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Doria Diana or Diana Doria, after both grandmothers, would’ve been nicely alliterative — she could’ve been known as Dee Dee — but apparently that wasn’t posh enough and it would’ve left the boss of the Firm out in the cold.
So Lilibet Diana it is, one of those”L”names reportedly prized by Gen Zers — Lillian, Luna, etc. — but one that also begs the question, whatever happened to traditional names? Catherine has a nice ring to it. Oh, wait….
Speaking of Kate — whom Harry apparently texted when the baby was born, confirming her role as the peacemaker between the brothers — when NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked her if she had anything to say to her new niece, she replied, “Aw, I wish her all the very best.” That “aw” contained a certain wistfulness. Go back and listen to it. More has been lost in all this than a name can breach.