{"id":201600,"date":"2026-04-18T06:46:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T06:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/201600\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T06:46:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T06:46:33","slug":"queen-elizabeths-real-reaction-to-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-naming-their-daughter-lilibet-exclusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/201600\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen Elizabeth’s real reaction to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle naming their daughter ‘Lilibet’ – exclusive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prince Harry<\/a> and Meghan Markle<\/a>‘s decision to name their daughter Lilibet has long divided opinion in royal circles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it seems her namesake, the late Queen Elizabeth II<\/a>, was completely on board with it, according to a royal author. Lilibet was the Queen’s childhood nickname<\/a>, an intimate moniker only used by those closest to her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking on HELLO!’s A Right Royal Podcast, author Gyles Brandreth, a close friend of the late monarch, said the Queen responded to the news as any great-grandmother would.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gyles, who is the author of the new book, Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, said the Queen had a very heartwarming reaction when she was told of the name, responding: “That’s lovely.”<\/p>\n

He said: “I do know that when she heard they were calling her Lili, she said, ‘Oh that’s lovely. Lili, that’s lovely, isn’t it?’ There was no confusion. In a way, to picture the Queen you\u2019ve got to think of a country woman of her generation. You’ve got to think of a grandmother. So her response would be a grandmother’s response.”<\/p>\n

To hear the full details of the Queen’s reaction, you can listen to the latest episode of A Right Royal Podcast, below:<\/p>\n

Listen: A Right Royal Podcast<\/p>\n

Princess Lilibet<\/a>, now four, is the younger sister of Prince Archie, six, and Harry and Meghan’s only daughter. She was born on 4 June 2021 at the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lilibet only met the late Queen once<\/a>, during her Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June 2022, a few months before she passed away aged 96.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Prince\u00a9 InstagramPrincess Lilibet is named after the late Queen
\nQueen Elizabeth II’s role as grandmother<\/p>\n

Queen Elizabeth had eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren<\/a>, with two more arriving\u00a0<\/a>after she passed away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking to HELLO!, Gyles said that the Queen was “told” rather than “asked” about Lilibet’s name. But he said: “I’m sure if she felt no, she could have said no. But she went along with it, because she was a nice, decent person.”<\/p>\n

\"Queen\u00a9 GettyPrince Harry and Meghan said they asked the Queen about using the name<\/p>\n

Still, recollections varied over how it came about, with Gyles explaining in his book: “According to the Sussexes, Harry sought his grandmother\u2019s permission to use her intimate family nickname as the Christian name for her eleventh great-grandchild. The Queen\u2019s recollection was a little different.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“According to the Queen, Harry told her the Sussexes wanted to call the baby ‘Lilibet’ in her honour and she accepted their choice with a good grace, taking it as the compliment it was intended to be.”<\/p>\n

He added: “Others in the family found the choice ‘bewildering’ and ‘rather presumptuous’ given that ‘Lilibet’ as a name had always been intimately and exclusively the Queen\u2019s. Later the Queen said, \u2018I hear they\u2019re calling her Lili which is very pretty and seems just right.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s decision to name their daughter Lilibet has long divided opinion in royal circles.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[1432,9,24,63,2811,34474,122,124,123,67301,1431,1245],"class_list":{"0":"post-201600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-british-royals","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-prince-harry-and-meghan","13":"tag-princess-lilibet","14":"tag-queens","15":"tag-queens-headlines","16":"tag-queens-news","17":"tag-right-royal-podcast","18":"tag-royalty","19":"tag-the-queen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}