Oh Na Na, What's Your Name?
What Even Are Meghan Markle & Kate Middleton’s Titles?
Apparently, many people have been calling them by completely wrong names, as Kylie Kelce recently learned.
The Royal Family has a naming crisis — at least for me. After Queen Elizabeth II’s death in 2022, Kate Middleton’s formal title changed to Catherine, Princess of Wales. But even when she was the Duchess of Cambridge (a title she still holds today), the public proudly kept calling her by her nickname, leading to the moniker Princess Kate.
Except as Kylie Kelce and the rest of us recently learned, that’s apparently not acceptable anymore.
During the Sept. 24 episode of her Not Gonna Lie podcast, Kelce jokingly invited Middleton to be a guest, noting that Prince William appeared on her husband Jason’s New Heights podcast. “Princess Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, if you ever wanted to come on and chitchat about some field hockey and maybe kids. I don’t know,” she said. “We got a couple things in common.”
Apparently, the backlash was swift enough that Kelce addressed it on her next episode. Upon getting corrected, she apologized for the mishap, saying she “would like to refer to people in the most respectful way and how they feel respected.”
“Princess Catherine or the Princess of Wales, I apologize. I will get that sorted immediately starting now,” she said. “I love learning, so I was unaware that calling Princess Catherine, Princess Kate was offensive. I didn’t know that. Now I know.”
Except I don’t know. And it’s safe to say most people don’t, given how she’s always called herself Kate Middleton in public consciousness, no matter how many title changes she’s had in the Royal Family. Even People made a point of clarifying that they refer to her as both Princess Kate and the Princess of Wales in their coverage. Kate is her name, and Princess is her title. What’s the problem here?
The debacle is reminiscent of when Middleton’s sister-in-law Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, revealed that her last name was actually... Sussex. “It’s so funny too that you keep saying ‘Meghan Markle.’ You know I’m Sussex now,” she told Mindy Kaling on her Netflix series With Love, Meghan. No, she did not. This wasn’t public knowledge, but carry on, Meghan.
Markle — nay, Sussex — explained that she made her royal title her namesake so her family could share the same surname. “You have kids and you go, No, I share my name with my children,” she said. “And that feels so... I didn’t know how meaningful it would be to me, but it just means so much to go, this is our family name. Our little family name.”
This is a totally valid and sweet explanation — except she still went by either Meghan Markle or her formal royal title, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, in the show’s promotional materials, so forgive us for not knowing. At this point, let’s just use their first names to make it easier on everyone.
