Did Meghan Markle remove her name from Archie's birth certificate?

It was recently revealed that in the birth certificate of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's son Archie, the former American actress has been registered just with her royal title with no mention of her maiden name. This started speculations over who initiated the change in June 2019, as the certificate made over a week after Archie's birth in May had her complete name.

A report in The Sun on Saturday, January 30, claimed that the "Suits" alum had "taken the unprecedented action of removing" her first and middle names, Rachel Meghan, under the "mother" category on her son's birth document so that it included just her title, "Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Sussex." Harry's name and the title was also changed from "His Royal Highness Henry Charles Albert David Duke of Sussex" to "His Royal Highness Prince Henry Charles Albert David Duke of Sussex."

The report further claimed that Meghan's action could be seen as a snub to the Cambridges, as Prince William and Kate Middleton included her formal name Catherine in all her three children's certificates. It added that Meghan might have been following in the footsteps of her late mother-in-law Princess Diana, who always used "Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales."

Meanwhile, royal expert Ingrid Seward said: "For a royal to change a birth certificate is unprecedented but to remove forenames is remarkable. Perhaps this is another sign they were desperate to do something different to the Cambridges."

However, these claims have been disputed by a spokesperson of the Sussexes, who insisted that the changes were done on the directions of Buckingham Palace, the office of Queen Elizabeth II.

"The change of name on public documents in 2019 was dictated by The Palace, as confirmed by documents from senior Palace officials. This was not requested by Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex nor by The Duke of Sussex," the spokesperson told E! News.

The rep added that it was "offensive" to suggest that Meghan purposely removed her name from her son's document just to snub her royal in-laws.

"To see this U.K. tabloid and their carnival of so-called 'experts' chose to deceptively whip this into a calculated family 'snub' and suggest that she would oddly want to be nameless on her child's birth certificate, or any other legal document, would be laughable were it not offensive. There's a lot going on in the world; let's focus on that rather than creating clickbait," the spokesperson continued.

Buckingham Palace has not issued any clarification on the matter.