With Love, Meghan, has finally dropped on Netflix after the airdate was pushed due to the California wildfires. The eight-episode show has already garnered many reactions all over the internet, but there’s one revelation that stopped us in our tracks— when did Meghan stop using the surname Markle? According to the actor turned Duchess, her real name is Meghan Sussex now, not Meghan Markle.
One of Meghan’s first guests was her ‘email pen pal’ Mindy Kaling, who she first met when the actress was a guest on the Duchess’s short-lived podcast, Archetypes, in 2022. Kaling first received the call to be on the show two months after she had given birth to her youngest child, Anne, so it’s very fitting that the pair organised a children’s garden party during Kaling’s episode.
On the show, Meghan called Kaling out for continuously using her maiden name, when in fact she apparently no longer goes by Markle anymore. The mum-of-two said, ‘It’s so funny, too, that you keep saying Meghan Markle. You know I’m Sussex now.’
Is Meghan's surname really Sussex?
That’s right, in her day-to-day life Meghan now goes by Meghan Sussex, with Harry and their children also adopting the new surname. The former Suits star went on to say, 'I share my name with my children. I didn’t know how meaningful that would be to me, but it just means so much to go, “This is our family name, our little family name.”’
When Meghan wed Prince Harry in May 2018, Queen Elizabeth granted them the titles of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and it is a tradition within the royal family that their children— Prince Archie, five, and Princess Lilibet, three— use that as a surname. Even Prince Harry was known as ‘Harry Wales’ during his school days, as his father King Charles then held the title of Prince of Wales.
Archie and Lilibet were initially known as Master Archie Mountbatten-Windsor and Miss Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor until their grandfather became king in September 2022, and their family website was then updated with their new titles— Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet of Sussex.
Meghan told People Magazine, ‘It’s our shared name as a family, and I guess I hadn’t recognized how meaningful that would be to me until we had children. I love that that is something that Archie, Lili, H and I all have together. It means a lot to me.’
Sarah O'Byrne is a writer for Grazia, heat, Closer, Yours, Bella and Crime Monthly. She primarily focuses on celebrity and entertainment news.