Meghan Markle dropped a new Netflix lifestyle show on Tuesday. The eight-episode series is primarily about the Duchess of Sussex claiming she’s a relatable working mom while carefully slicing raspberries in half and arranging a rainbow-shaped fruit plate for her children. But there’s a surprising secondary theme: dizzying name changes.
The drama started on February 18, when Meghan announced she was changing the name of her yet-to-be-launched business venture from American Riviera Orchard to As Ever. Although the Duchess wrote on Instagram, “I’m thrilled to introduce you to As Ever,” it appears she then tweaked the name again: The brand name is styled As ever (lowercase e) on the new website, which features a variety of fruit preserves, teas, and “flower sprinkles” that you can’t actually purchase yet.
Now Meghan has revealed that she, too, has a new(ish) moniker: the last name Sussex. This information is unveiled in a passive-aggressive exchange with Mindy Kaling during episode two of With Love, Meghan (just to add to the confusion, the Netflix show about the As Ever founder is named after a different sign-off phrase.)
As Meghan is explaining that she grew up as an average American “latchkey” kid who ate a lot of fast food, she informs Kaling that she’s addressing her incorrectly.
“Uh, I don’t think anyone in the world knows that Meghan Markle has eaten Jack in the Box and loves it,” Kaling quips.
“It’s so funny, too, that you keep saying ‘Meghan Markle.’ You know I’m Sussex now,” the Duchess replies in a tone that suggests she’s not actually amused.
There’s an awkward pause, then Meghan continues: “You have kids, and you go, ‘Now I share my name with my children.’ 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.’”
“Well, now I know, and I love it,” Kaling says.
Meghan also talked about her fondness for Sussex in this week’s People cover story:
Meghan says the Sussex name — bestowed upon her and Harry by Queen Elizabeth on their 2018 wedding day — holds a deeper significance than she could have imagined before motherhood.
“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,” she says. “I love that that is something that Archie, Lili, H and I all have together. It means a lot to me.”
The Sussex name, she adds, “is part of our love story.”
It’s not surprising that the Duchess would rather not be referred to by her maiden name. (Catherine, the Princess of Wales, has been trying to get people to stop calling her Kate Middleton since 2011, to no avail.) But the fact that she is Meghan Sussex is, in fact, not well known.
There’s generally a lot of confusion about royal surnames. The British royal family’s official website has a whole page explaining how they’ve changed over the past century. “Members of the Royal Family can be known both by the name of the Royal house, and by a surname, which are not always the same,” it says. “And often they do not use a surname at all.”
King Charles’s five grandchildren have always used different surnames. Prince William’s three children go by Wales, the same surname he and Prince Harry used at school and in the military. But Harry and Meghan’s children were originally Mountbatten-Windsor, and at some point, the whole family adopted Sussex as a surname, as People reported last month:
While their 4-year-old son, Prince Archie, and 2-year-old daughter, Princess Lilibet, were previously known as “Master Archie Mountbatten-Windsor” and “Miss Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor,” the children were afforded the titles of prince and princess when their grandfather King Charles became monarch in Sept. 2022.
Meghan, 42, and Prince Harry, 39, used their children’s royal titles for the first time in March 2023 when they announced Lili’s christening, and their names have been updated to “Prince Archie of Sussex” and “Princess Lilibet of Sussex” on the royal family’s official website.
PEOPLE understands that Sussex is their family surname.
If you can’t keep all of this straight, don’t feel bad; Meghan Sussex may be a bit confused too. The closing credits of With Love, Meghan list the royal as “Meghan, Duchess of Sussex” rather than “Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.” Dropping “the” is incorrect, according to GB News: “Traditionally, the royal style difference is used by divorced members of the Royal Family after they lose the title.”
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