You know what they say — three's a crowd. Here's the bizarre reason Charles and Camilla wanted Princess Catherine to change her name.
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00:00You know what they say, three's a crowd.
00:02Here's the bizarre reason Charles and Camilla wanted Princess Catherine to change her name.
00:07When Kate Middleton married Prince William in 2011, her commoner name was officially
00:12a thing of the past.
00:13Henceforth, she was to be Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, later Princess of Wales as well.
00:17But that apparently didn't sit well with then-future King Charles III.
00:22According to Prince Harry's memoir, Spare, Charles expressed concern over the future Princess
00:26of Wales' name.
00:27The King and Camilla Queen Consort allegedly wanted Catherine to change the spelling of
00:31her name to Catherine.
00:33Basically, they felt there were already too many royal family members whose names began
00:36with C.
00:37Apparently, they thought that if Catherine were to start using C for her royal cipher,
00:41aka the monarch's official monogram symbol, it might get mixed up with other royal ciphers.
00:46Since being crowned, Charles and Camilla both have royal ciphers with the letter CR.
00:50For Charles, that stands for his name and Rex, which is Latin for King.
00:54In Camilla's case, the R is for Regina, which is Latin for, you guessed it, Queen.
00:59Addressing those, Harry wrote,
01:01"...there were already two royal ciphers with C and a crown above, Charles and Camilla.
01:05It would be too confusing to have another.
01:07Make it Catherine with a K, they suggested."
01:09Harry added that Prince William was present for the conversation and sat by without comment
01:13as their father and stepmother debated the name change on behalf of his wife.
01:17Harry said,
01:18"...I turned to Willie, gave him a look that said, you listening to this?
01:21His face was blank."
01:22Clearly, the suggestion didn't stick, since Catherine has retained the C spelling in the
01:26years since and has even tried to stop people from using the other K word, Kate.
01:31In 2008, several years before even becoming engaged to William, she apparently sent an
01:36email to her friends asking them to stop calling her Kate, according to Express.
01:40A source told the outlet,
01:41"...I hear that in the past few weeks the former accessories buyer has quietly informed
01:45friends that she would like to drop the informal Kate and in future wishes to be known by her
01:49full name, Catherine."
01:51From the way their 2010 engagement interview went, her future husband clearly wasn't on
01:55the mailing list.
01:56"...It's about making your own future and your own destiny and Kate will do a very good
02:00job of that."
02:01William, at least, began publicly using the more formal Catherine once they got married,
02:05but to this day the media and members of the general public have been stuck on calling
02:08her Kate, and that's not likely to change anytime soon.
02:11Why?
02:12Well, to put it bluntly, the royal family makes headlines, and news outlets need to
02:16make sure that readers can find those headlines.
02:18For example, after Queen Elizabeth II's death in September 2022, People magazine recognized
02:23that though the Princess of Wales prefers to be called Catherine, the outlet would continue
02:26referring to her as Kate Middleton because it was the more commonly searched name for
02:30the royal.
02:31The publication explained,
02:32"...in headlines and upon first reference, Kate Middleton will remain so readers can
02:36quickly find the stories they are searching."
02:38What's more, people have a connection to the name Kate Middleton.
02:42As Boston University British history professor Ariane Chernock told Vanity Fair, the media,
02:47especially American outlets, seem to prefer Kate over Catherine.
02:50Chernock explained,
02:51"...it's precisely her middle-class origins and that name which won her over to so many
02:55people in the first place, so that reminder can only help her."
02:58If Kate's still the status quo after all these years, you can bet nobody would start going
03:03along with capital-K Catherine.
03:05Sorry, Charles!