Regnal names have been part of monarchy for centuries, but adopting an alternative name isn’t something reserved only for kings and queens.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, is a good example. Although the 41-year-old remains fifth in line to the British throne, the name most people know him by isn’t the one recorded on his birth certificate.
Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, stepped back from senior royal duties in 2020, but that decision didn’t remove him from the line of succession.
He sits behind William, Prince of Wales, 43, and William’s three children: Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 10, and seven-year-old Prince Louis.
While many of his close relatives remain UK-based, the Invictus Games founder lives in California with Meghan and their two children, Prince Archie, six, and Princess Lilibet, four.
“I very much enjoy living here and bringing my kids up here,” he said during the 2024 DealBook Summit.
“It’s a part of my life that I never thought I was going to live, and I feel as though it’s the life that my mom wanted for me, and to be able to do the things that I am able to do with my kids that I undoubtedly wouldn’t be able to do in the UK, is huge.”
Even with the couple’s high profile, on-screen projects, headline-making interviews, and long-publicised tensions within the royal family, some people are still only now discovering that “Harry” isn’t actually his given first name.
That’s because “Harry” is a nickname, not the name he was formally given at birth.
“My name is Henry, but everyone calls me Harry. I have no idea,” he previously stated at the WellChild awards.
His full christened name was recorded as Henry Charles Albert David, following his baptism by Robert Runcie, the former archbishop of Canterbury.
Despite “Henry” being his official first name, he has been known as “Harry” by those around him—and by the public—since he was young.
There’s even a family twist to the nickname: extracts from his 2024 memoir, Spare, suggest that William sometimes calls him “Harold”.
Online, the revelation continues to catch people off guard. One person wrote: “Laughing so much that Prince Harry’s name is HENRY and he doesn’t know why they call him Harry.
“They just started calling him that and he accepted never questioned it just went along with it.”
Another added: “Did you guys know that Prince Harry’s real name is actually Henry and one of his middle names is David because I just found out and my brain is in SHAMBLES.”
“Prince Harry’s real name being Henry never fails to startle me because I’ll be researching and looking at articles for Henry RWRB and see ‘Prince Henry of Wales’ and think I’m hallucinating,” someone else remarked via X.
And it’s not only first names that can shift in royal history—family names can change too.
In 1917, King George V altered the royal house name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor.
Then, 43 years later, Queen Elizabeth II added Mountbatten to recognise her husband, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
If all of that is surprising, the same idea extends well beyond royalty: many well-known celebrities also work under names that aren’t the ones on their birth certificates.
Bugonia actress Emma Stone, for example, was born Emily Stone.
She has explained that she changed her professional name after entering the industry because another “Emily Stone” was already registered with SAG-AFTRA.
Even so, she has also said she’d prefer colleagues call her Emily rather than Emma.
Plenty of other performers do something similar, including Vin Diesel (Mark Sinclair), Jamie Foxx (Eric Marlon Bishop), and Elle and Dakota Fanning (Mary Elle and Hannah Dakota).
As for the Fast and Furious star, he has said he adopted the name Vin Diesel during the nine years he worked as a bouncer.