As Prince Harry reunited with the royal family, including Prince William and Kate Middleton, at Prince Philip’s funeral over the weekend, his wife Meghan Markle was back at home in California with their son Archie, as she was unable to travel due to her pregnancy. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are currently awaiting the arrival of their second child, a baby girl, after announcing the exciting news on Valentine’s Day earlier this year.
Just as speculation mounted ahead of Archie’s arrival, many fans have begun guessing what the couple will name their daughter—and fans of The Crown might already have an idea. Many royal watchers are predicting on social media that Harry and Meghan might choose a name that honours both Queen Elizabeth and the late Duke of Edinburgh.
As was documented in Netflix’s royal drama, Her Majesty has a sweet moniker that only her parents and husband used: Lilibet. The name was believed to have come after a young Princess Elizabeth couldn’t pronounce her name, and it just stuck. In fact, Queen Elizabeth’s father, King George VI, once famously said about his two daughters, “Lilibet is my pride. Margaret is my joy”, and notably the monarch left a handwritten letter on her late husband’s coffin this week, which remained there throughout the services and was signed “Lilibet.”
Given the sentimental meaning behind the name, many believe Harry and Meghan will consider the name Lily for their daughter, as a sweet tribute to her great-grandparents.
“I’m not sure how relationships are between the family, but Lily would be a cute way to honour the Queen (Lilibet),” one royal fan wrote to Reddit, per Cosmopolitan, with another post writing, “I read a prediction somewhere that they could use Lily for the Queen because of her childhood nickname Lilibet and because of Meghan’s wedding bouquet being Lily of the valley. I think that’s really sweet.”
Meghan and Harry’s exciting news comes after the duchess revealed she suffered a miscarriage last July. In a raw, first-person essay for the New York Times, Meghan detailed the “unbearable grief” she suffered following the experience.
“Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few,” she wrote. “In the pain of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, 10 to 20 of them will have suffered from miscarriage. Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning.”
