Yahoo Lifestyle Meghan Markle's Estranged Dad Responds to Her Changing Last Name
While it's fairly commonplace for women to change their names after getting married, some people are taking issue with the fact that Meghan Markle wants to be known as Meghan Sussex since she tied the knot with Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex.
Even Meghan's estranged father, Thomas Markle, recently slammed his daughter over the name change.
“My mum loved Meghan very much, but she would be so disappointed to hear that Meghan no longer wants to use the name Markle,” Thomas, 80, claimed in a recent interview with the Daily Mail.
“My mother was proud to be a Markle,” he said, adding, “So am I.”
According to Thomas, Meghan “never had a problem” with her maiden name “until she met Prince Harry."
“Now I have to say, ‘I am Meghan Sussex’s dad,'” he said.
In the second episode of her new series, With Love, Meghan, Meghan, 43, corrected Mindy Kaling when she referred to her by her maiden name.
"It's so funny that you keep saying Meghan Markle, you know I'm Sussex now," she said.
Meghan opened up to PEOPLE recently about why she decided to start going by her husband's last name, which she shares with her two children, Archie, 5, and Lillibet, 3.
"It’s our shared name as a family, and I guess I hadn’t recognized how meaningful that would be to me until we had children," she said. "I love that that is something that Archie, Lili, H and I all have together. It means a lot to me."
While Archie and Lilibet's birth certificates originally read Mountbatten-Windsor as their surnames, it's not uncommon for royals to use a title as a surname, according to Wendy Bosberry-Scott, editor of Debrett's British title guide Peerage.
"Now that [Harry] is the Duke of Sussex, it is perfectly within protocol for him to use Harry Sussex and for his wife to use Meghan Sussex," Scott said in a statement, per the British media outlet GB News.
Next: Meghan Markle Divides Internet With Kitchen Technique: 'She Almost Caught Her Finger'
