LONDON — Britain’s Prince Harry spoke with Queen Elizabeth II before his new daughter's name, Lilibet Diana, was made public, a spokesperson for the new mom and dad said Wednesday after a U.K. media report suggested otherwise.
Harry's grandmother was the “first family member he called,” the spokesperson said, adding the royal had spoken to other members of his family before revealing that he had chosen the name Lilibet (Lili) Diana Mountbatten-Windsor with Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.
The younger sister of the Sussexes' 2-year-old son, Archie, was born on Friday at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in California weighing 7 pounds, 11 ounces.
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Without the queen’s support, “they would not have used the name,” the spokesperson said.
Their comments came after an article on the BBC's website claimed a palace source had said the queen was not asked about using "Lilibet," the nickname used by her family, including her husband, Prince Philip, who died in April after 73 years of marriage.
The story by one of the BBC's royal correspondents remains on the broadcaster's website.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment. The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This comes weeks after the corporation was forced to apologize after an independent report found that journalist Martin Bashir used “deceitful behavior” to secure a landmark interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, Lilibet’s late grandmother, who was killed in a car accident in August 1997 and would have turned 60 this year.
The investigation found that Bashir acted inappropriately and breached the publicly funded broadcaster's editorial guidelines to gain access to Diana, who famously told him in the November 1995 interview that "there were three of us in this marriage."
Bashir, who went to work for another British network before joining ABC in the U.S. and later MSNBC, where he was a news anchor, said he was "deeply sorry" to Harry and his brother, Prince William, after the report was published.
Harry and Meghan stepped down from their roles as senior royals last year and now live in California, and Lili's birth comes as relations between the couple and the royal family are at a low point.
In March, Harry and Meghan sat down with Oprah Winfrey for a tell-all interview on their decision. The couple also discussed Meghan’s suicidal thoughts and racism in the United Kingdom.
CORRECTION (June 10, 2021, 6:55 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the number of sources on which the BBC relied for its report. It was one source, not multiple sources.
