Royal fans went into a frenzy this week after discovering an apparent glitch on the royal family’s website, with many speculating that the glitch had accidentally revealed the potential name of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry‘s upcoming child.
The website, www.royal.uk, features pages covering each royal family member, from Queen Elizabeth II all the way down to 1-year-old Prince Louis. Searching certain terms in the address bar, like “/princess-alice,” leads to a page not found message, but others, including “/prince-arthur,” “/prince-alexander,” or “/prince-james,” lead to the homepage.
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This redirect led several fans to believe that Harry and Markle are expecting a boy with one of the aforementioned names and that the website is holding the page ready to be revealed after the baby’s birth.
The Palace addressed the glitch in a statement to Yahoo! UK, noting that the redirects have been there for some time and seemingly denying that the names may belong to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s unborn child.
“A large number of search term redirects were set up some time ago on royal.uk,” a spokesperson said. “This was in order to improve user experience. For guidance you will note that other names preceded by ‘prince’ or ‘princess’ produce the same result.”
This same theory circulated among fans last year before Louis was born, with rumors that he would be named Albert turning out to be false.
According to the Telegraph, the top predicted names for Markle and Harry’s baby are Diana, Victoria and Alice for a girl and Arthur, James and Albert for a boy.
Regardless of whichever name they do choose, Markle and Harry’s son or daughter will likely not be a prince or princess, as the Queen would have to step in to allow Harry’s children to hold the title. She issued a patent granting Prince William and Kate Middleton‘s children titles several months before their first child, Prince George, was born, and as no patent has yet been issued for Harry’s child, it’s likely that the infant will not be titled prince or princess.
Should the baby receive a title, it will likely be Earl or Lady, but royal reporters Omid Scobie and Emily Andrews noted on an episode of their podcast On Heir that Markle and Harry may be considering not titling their children at all.
“We’ve heard from several sources on both sides that the couple really hope to forgo the formality of royal titles,” Scobie said.
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