For most of this year, there’s been an endless amount of discourse about the Duchess of Sussex’s surname. Within With Love, Meghan, she told Mindy Kaling that “I’m Sussex now” when Mindy referred to her as “Meghan Markle.” Meghan told People Mag that she and her family (including Archie and Lili) use Sussex as their surname and they consider it their shared family name. Palace insiders and protocol police have been ripping out their hair and wailing like banshees for months. Even in Meghan’s interview with Emily Chang last week, Chang once again asked Meghan to clarify the Sussex surname situation. Everyone acted as if it was completely unheard-of for a royal or titled family to use their ducal/earldom/whatever title as a surname. Well, as part of People Magazine’s “no sh-t, Sherlock” royal coverage, they slipped in a fun little story about what names Prince George, Prince Louis and Princess Charlotte use at school. You’re not going to believe this, you guys.

Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis are off to a new school year, but they won’t be using their royal titles in the classroom. Prince William and Kate Middleton’s three children are known to their teachers and friends at school as George Wales, Charlotte Wales and Louis Wales, with the surname taken from their parents’ titles as the Prince and Princess of Wales.

Though the children all received prince or princess titles and His or Her Royal Highness styling at birth, going by their first name and the surname of Wales is a more informal address that allows them to blend in with the student body.

When a last name is necessary, it’s tradition within the royal family for children to use their parents’ titles as the basis for their last name. Prince William and Prince Harry were similarly called William Wales and Harry Wales while at school and in the military, as their father, the future King Charles, was then the Prince of Wales.

However, Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 10, and Prince Louis, 7, didn’t always go by the last name of Wales in the classroom. Queen Elizabeth made William and Kate the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge when they wed in 2011, and the couple’s children were previously called George Cambridge, Charlotte Cambridge and Louis Cambridge at school. When Prince George started school at Thomas’s Battersea in September 2017, a close look at the name tag on his backpack showed said “George Cambridge.”

Last names are a bit tricky within the British royal family, and in 1960, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip decided that their direct descendants would have the last name of Mountbatten-Windsor. The royal couple tacked “Mountbatten” onto the British royal family’s official surname of Windsor, which was adopted by King George V in 1917.

However, it became a custom within the family for later generations of children with royal titles to use their parents’ titles as the inspiration for their surname. As Prince William was called William Wales, his cousins, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, used York as their last name as their father, Prince Andrew, is the Duke of York.

[From People]

I already knew this, as did anyone with even a passing interest in British royalty. Harry and William both used “Wales” as a surname when they were in school and in the military. Beatrice and Eugenie both used York as a surname. When QEII died, there were stories updating the titles of the Wales kids and specifying that they were no longer “of Cambridge” but now “of Wales.” And yet, it was a five-alarm fire when Meghan called herself Meg Sussex, and said that her children use Sussex as a surname. Gee, I wonder why? In any case, I certainly hope that we get at least twenty huffy Daily Mail columns about how using “Wales” as a surname is a slap in the face to QEII, and how NO ONE would ever dream of using their title as a last name OR a married name.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.