Kate Middleton Felt \201cBig Pressure\201d When It Came to Naming Her Three Children

(Image credit: Getty)

published 9 October 2022

Ask any parent, and they’ll tell you getting their baby’s name just right is an arduous task. Imagine if you’re giving birth to a future U.K. monarch, and the world’s press is literally right outside, clamoring for his or her (in this case, his) name to be announced. Pressure? Absolutely.

Per People, the new Princess of Wales opened up about the daunting task while talking with new parents at the maternity unit of the Royal Surrey County Hospital, where she visited this week on an official engagement.

“She just really talked about her own children, including how they chose their names,” says Amy Stubbs, deputy director of midwifery, who told the outlet that Kate was easy for the new parents to connect with. “A lot of the new mums and dads are thinking about how to choose names for their babies, and they spoke with her about how Kate and William made their choice. She said they were their favorite names and that obviously the world was waiting for them to name their children—and that felt like quite a big pressure!”

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Prince George Alexander Louis was born on July 22, 2013, followed by Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana on May 2, 2015, and Prince Louis Arthur Charles on April 23, 2018.

“She was very relatable,” Stubbs says. “She talked a lot about how it felt for her when she became a mother.”

Kate visited the Guilford, England hospital to advance her understanding of the best practices in maternity care as she works to further improvements for mothers and children across the U.K., People reports. Stubbs says it was “fantastic” to feel the Princess of Wales’ support for the critical issue of maternity services, and that “she was just delightful. She spent a lot of time talking to a lot of the staff and meeting mums and dadas and new babies across the whole service. It was really joyful for everyone to have that opportunity and hugely validating for us as a service for her to take the time out to visit us.”

Helping children and families is one of the major works of Kate’s royal career—she launched the Centre for Early Childhood in June 2021 and advocates fiercely for the greater awareness of the importance of early childhood development.

“She was particularly interested in maternal mental health and how we are supporting maternal mental wellbeing through pregnancy and in the early post-natal periods,” Stubbs says. “She particularly spent a lot of time talking to staff and families about that aspect of care and how that felt for them.”

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Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.