The Queen believed that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would name their daughter Elizabeth after a phone call with Harry and was surprised when the couple’s choice was actually Lilibet, a friend of the royals has claimed.
Nicky Haslam, whose royal friends include the Duchess of Cornwall, has insisted that Meghan and Harry should’ve named their daughter Doria.
He claimed that Her Majesty thought that their daughter would be named Elizabeth and was shocked to hear that the Sussexes had called her Lilibet.
“I heard he (Harry) rang her and said: ‘We want to call our daughter after you, Granny.’ She said: ‘How charming of you, thank you’, thinking that it would be Elizabeth,” Mr. Haslam said on The Third Act podcast.
“So they got the permission, but they didn’t say the name.”
He also questioned why the Sussexes did not name their daughter after Meghan’s mother.
“Why on earth didn’t they call that baby Doria?” he asked. “It’s the prettiest name ever.”
Speculations has surrounded Harry and Meghan’s decision to name their daughter Lilibet since Jonny Dymond, BBC’s royal correspondent, claimed that they did not ask the Queen if they could use her childhood nickname.
But the couple said that the BBC story was ‘false and defamatory.’
“The Duke spoke with his family in advance of the announcement — in fact, his grandmother was the first family member he called,” a spokesperson for the couple said.
“During that conversation, he shared their hope of naming their daughter Lilibet in her honor. Had she not been supportive, they would not have used the name.”
Mr. Haslam alleges that the name Lilibet was not mentioned during the phone conversation with the Queen.
Lilibet was the childhood nickname used in private by her father, George VI, and her husband, Prince Philip.
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