Prince Harry Reportedly Considered Taking Princess Diana’s Last Name In Conversation With Her Brother

Jul 15, 2025 by apost team

Prince Harry, 41, reportedly considered making a bold break from royal tradition by adopting his late mother Princess Diana’s surname, Spencer – a move that would have meant parting ways with the name Mountbatten-Windsor. 

Although Mountbatten-Windsor remains the official surname for some royal descendants, Harry, his wife Meghan, and their children now informally go by “Sussex,” mirroring how Harry and his brother, Prince William, once used “Wales” during their youth, reflecting their parents’ titles at the time.  

Mountbatten-Windsor was created in 1960, blending Queen Elizabeth II’s royal lineage with Prince Philip’s family name. The name “Windsor” itself was adopted by King George V in 1917, while “Mountbatten” originated with Prince Philip upon becoming a British citizen.

Choosing to drop Mountbatten-Windsor could have been seen as controversial, especially given King Charles’s personal connection to the name and its legacy. It risked deepening the ongoing tensions between Harry and his father, a relationship already strained since Harry and Meghan stepped back from royal duties in 2020.

Things took a more heated turn after Prince Harry lost a legal appeal for the government to provide automatic police security when he and his family visit his home country. On May 2, 2025, Prince Harry shared his feelings with the BBC, revealing that he won’t be taking his family to England anytime soon.

“I can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the U.K. at this point,” he said.

However, he maintained that he continues to love his country despite everything.

“The things that they’re going to miss is, well, everything,” Harry stated, adding, “I love my country. I always have done. Despite what some people in that country have done.”

During a rare trip to the United Kingdom in mid-2025, Prince Harry was said to have floated the idea of changing his last name in a personal conversation with his uncle, Charles Spencer, the 9th Earl Spencer and younger brother of Princess Diana. According to reports, Harry confided in Spencer about possibly adopting his mother’s surname, stepping away from the royal family’s traditional Mountbatten-Windsor name.

A close friend of Prince Harry shared that “they had a very amicable conversation and Spencer advised him against taking such a step,” adding that the potential legal complications and broader implications would have been far too challenging to navigate.

The conversation around surnames gained new attention following the success of Meghan’s Netflix lifestyle series “With Love, Meghan,” which premiered in March 2025. In one episode, Meghan gently corrected her friend, Mindy Kaling, for calling her by her maiden name, prompting renewed focus on the Sussex family identity.

In an interview with PEOPLE, Meghan opened up about the emotional significance of the Sussex name.

“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,” she said.

Since King Charles became monarch in September 2022, Archie and Lilibet received the titles of Prince and Princess, as is customary for grandchildren of the sovereign. Their names were formally updated on the royal family’s website as “Prince Archie of Sussex” and “Princess Lilibet of Sussex.”

Harry and Meghan first received their titles as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from Queen Elizabeth upon their marriage in May 2018, marking the beginning of a new chapter with a family name that now holds even greater personal significance.

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Prince Harry’s mere contemplation of a different name shows just how deeply he’s reconsidering his identity. What do you think of this? Let us know, and then pass this along to fans of the royals to find out what they think!