Just like most couples expecting a child, there’s typically a struggle to figure out what to name their incoming bundle of joy. And for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, this was no different.
When attending the Invictus Games in The Hague, Meghan stopped by for a reading session with children at the event. It was here that she got chatting with Sherry McBain, a nursing officer in the Royal Air Force, about her son, Harrison.
A competitor in this year’s games, Sherry told the P.A. News Agency that her wife, Mandy, was the one who realised that their child and the Duchess of Sussex’s firstborn share a name.
“[Meghan] was like, ‘Harrison—that’s Archie’s middle name,’ and Mandy was like, ‘Yeah, I know,’” Sherry said. “They were just having a chat because Harry and Meghan couldn’t decide between Archie and Harrison for the first name.”
Describing her interaction with Meghan as “really open” and “really friendly”, she added that her son Harrison was “just over the moon that a princess has read him a story, so that went down really well with all the U.K. children”.
Sharing one of his artworks with the royal, Sherry explained how her son handed Meghan a picture that he drew of a tram.
“I don’t think it quite looked like a tram, so she was very gracious and said that’s a brilliant tram, so he was delighted,” Sherry explained.
As we know, Harry and Meghan were more than happy to talk about their two young children, Archie and Lilibet, while attending the games, with Harry speaking of them while introducing the opening ceremony.
“When I talk to my son Archie about what he wants to be when he grows up, some days it’s an astronaut, other days it’s a pilot—a helicopter pilot obviously—or Kwazii from Octonauts,” he told the audience.
“But what I remind him is that no matter what you want to be when you grow up, it’s your character that matters most, and nothing would make his mum and me prouder than to see him have the character of what we see before us today.”
Of course, the pair’s eldest child has the full name of Archibald Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor and is thought to be named after Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll of Scotland, who was also an ancestor of Harry’s mother Princess Diana.
As for Meghan, she is also a distant relative of Benjamin Harrison, a former U.S. president, which means that Archie’s name has symbolic connections between both the U.S. and the U.K.
While his parents are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Archie will actually hold no formal title and will be simply referred to as Master Archie. Their son is also seventh in line to the throne, as Queen Elizabeth’s eighth great-grandchild.
