Revealed: The words Harry and Meghan used to tell the Queen they were calling their daughter Lilibet – told for the first time by an insider

When Meghan Markle issued advice to expectant mothers this week to never tell anyone what you’re planning to call your child, it was a timely reminder that she has experienced the furore a baby name can cause.

In June 2021, Harry and Meghan announced the birth of their daughter Lilibet – named in honour of the affectionate childhood nickname given to the late Queen and used by her parents, King George VI, the Queen Mother, and her sister, Princess Margaret, as well as her husband, Prince Philip, and a handful of close friends.

The couple insisted that the Queen was ‘supportive’ of them using the name, however in his biography ‘King Charles III The Inside Story, royal insider and Daily Mail columnist Robert Hardman revealed how the monarch was infuriated by their claim that she had given her blessing.

So, when the Sussexes fired off a legal letter to the BBC for an article saying they didn’t ask permission, Buckingham Palace refused to back up their version of events.

Now a source has told MailOnline further details of how the baby name announcement unfolded, and say it was a case of the couple telling the Queen of their intentions than seeking her permission.

‘Harry and Meghan presented this to the Queen as: “We’re going to call her Lilibet. Isn’t that great?”,’ the source said. ‘The palace version was that they didn’t ask.

‘The Queen was asked to prop up their version of events that didn’t match her own. She wasn’t furious about using the name Lilibet, it was the way it was handled.’

It echoes the claim made in Hardman’s biography by a member of palace staff who said the monarch was ‘as angry as I’d ever seen her’ over the Sussexes’ attempt to get the palace to support their version of events.

Harry and Meghan, pictured with the Queen on the Buckingham Palace balcony in July 2018, insisted they had the late monarch’s permission to use her childhood nickname for their daughter  

Lilibet in a picture released by the Sussexes for her first birthday.  When Harry and Meghan announced the name, they immediately found themselves in a tussle with Buckingham Palace 

Meghan, who shares two children with Prince Harry – Archie, six, and Lilibet, three – gave her thoughts on choosing baby names during the season finale of her Lemonada Media podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder.

The episode was in conversation with Spanx founder Sara Blakely, as they spoke about being business owners balancing work and motherhood.

During the finale, the topic of naming a company came up, and Meghan lamented that at the beginning of a business so many people have opinions, likening it to starting a ‘SurveyMonkey’.

‘It’s no different, and I will say this to every woman in the world or every person in the world who’s going to have a child, if you have an idea about what you are going to name that baby, you keep it so close to your heart, until that baby is born and it’s named,’ Meghan said.

‘Don’t ask anyone’s opinion,’ she added.

It seems that Meghan and her husband followed that advice when it came to naming Lilibet, because the late Queen did not feel that she was asked for her opinion on the name, but rather couldn’t say no after the couple announced their intentions.

Prince Harry said that he phoned his grandmother, pictured speaking to Boris Johnson from Windsor Castle in March 2020, prior to announcing the birth of his daughter Lilibet 

Writing in his royal biography ‘ King Charles III The Inside Story, royal insider and Daily Mail columnist Robert Hardman said that the disagreement came about after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex claimed that the Queen had gave them permission to use the name

Soon after Lilibet’s birth, a BBC report from a palace source said that the Queen was not asked by the duke and duchess as to whether they could use her nickname.

Other sources told media, including the Mail, that while the Queen was called by her grandson and his wife, she felt she wasn’t in a position to say no.

But the Sussexes’ spokesman insisted the couple would not have used the name had the Queen not been ‘supportive’.

They said at the time: ‘The duke spoke with his family in advance of the announcement – in fact his grandmother was the first family member he called.

‘During that conversation, he shared their hope of naming their daughter Lilibet in her honour. 

‘Had she not been supportive, they would not have used the name.’

Strongly-worded legal letters were then sent out.

Hardman wrote that some of the late monarch’s household were particularly ‘interested’ that amidst a wealth of private family information and criticism of staff members, Harry mysteriously ‘omitted’ this entire incident from his memoir Spare.

Meghan also shared a touching clip this week of her and Lilibet in matching beekeeping suits

Despite the intense public interest in Lilibet and her brother Archie, Harry and Meghan have been conscious to make sure their children have a relatively normal upbringing

The author said: ‘One privately recalled that Elizabeth II had been “as angry as I’d ever seen her” in 2021 after the Sussexes announced that she had given them her blessing to call their baby daughter ‘Lilibet’, the Queen’s childhood nickname.

‘The couple subsequently fired off warnings of legal action against anyone who dared to suggest otherwise, as the BBC had done. However, when the Sussexes tried to co-opt the Palace into propping up their version of events, they were rebuffed.

‘Once again, it was a case of “recollections may vary” – the late Queen’s reaction to the Oprah Winfrey interview – as far as Her Majesty was concerned.

‘Those noisy threats of legal action duly evaporated and the libel actions against the BBC never materialised.’