The Prince Harry (36) he wanted to pay tribute to his grandmother and mother with the arrival of his little daughter into the world Lilibet Diana and most likely she will ask one day why they decided to call her that.
Lilibet, as many know, is the affectionate nickname that Elizabeth II’s relatives gave her in childhood and that they continue to use ever since. Diana, on the other hand, is a clear tribute to the maternal grandmother of the newborn, who died in a car accident in 1997 and never got to know any of her five grandchildren: the three children of Prince William with Duchess Catherine. and the two that Harry has with his wife Meghan Markle.
It has always been believed that the Princess of Wales inherited her name from her ancestor Diana, Duchess of Bedford, whom her family affectionately referred to by the diminutive that his descendant would end up making famous centuries later: ‘Di’. However, it would actually have been her mother, Frances Roche, who decided to name her after a Paul Anka song titled ‘Diana’.
The singer himself learned of this information through another Diana who also happened to be one of Lady Di’s close friends: Diana Dare, wife of photographer Terence Donovan. “It was she who told my wife that Diana’s mother liked the song, and that’s why they gave her that name”, he has revealed in statements to the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Paul Anka composed the song when he was just 15 years old, inspired by an older girl he often saw in church and who sometimes cared for his younger siblings as a babysitter. Over the four decades that have passed since it was released and reached number one on the UK charts, he has received countless letters from fathers and mothers explaining that their daughters are named Diana because of their history. he counted on that single. “Pop music was still in its infancy at that time, but it was incredibly powerful, and a song like that had much more weight than it could have today,” he acknowledged.
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