Time to Name This Royal Baby

Meghan has made her last public appearance; her baby is due at some point in the next few weeks. You know what that means: time to take some absolutely wild guesses about what they’re gonna name this kid.

Publications around the world with zero inside information—including this blog!—are angling for a slice of that royal baby traffic. Hence royal baby name blogs sprouting all over the internet. CNN has a royal baby name generator, and the suggestion that, “They will most likely honor the grandparents within the middle names of the child,” from a spokesperson for etiquette experts Debrett’s. The Telegraph has the odds—Diana tops the list for girls, while Arthur is leading for the boys—and some speculation about this child’s possible title. The kid won’t automatically be a prince or princess without the intervention of the Queen, thanks to the complicated vagaries of royal titles that honestly I cannot be bothered to memorize. Instead:

If the child is a boy, he could instead become Earl of Dumbarton – one of the subsidiary titles the prince received from the Queen on the morning of his wedding. The eldest son and heir apparent of a duke can use one of his father’s lesser grade peerage titles by courtesy, according to Debrett’s. A daughter could be Lady (first name) Mountbatten-Windsor, and any subsequent sons Lord (first name) Mountbatten-Windsor.

The Australian ABC has this to say:

“They are tradition-bound as personalities and in terms of their official status. They like the past and the sense that they’re the living embodiment of that past,” Royal expert and Flinders University Associate Professor Giselle Bastin said.

While minor Royals are more willing to experiment, the main players almost always look to a shortlist of recycled names for their offspring, according to British Royal protocol expert William Hanson.

Since 1066, 41 men and women have sat on the throne, but between them, only 13 names have been used.

Since Harry and Meghan’s kid will be further down the line of succession and almost certainly never get anywhere close to the throne, they can get creative—for royals, anyway. “[Prince Charles’s brother] Andrew and his then-wife Sarah Ferguson called their daughters Beatrice and Eugenie. Royal names for sure, but not of the Elizabeth and Mary variety,” said Dr. Bastin.