Princess Diana, who passed away in 1997, used to have nicknames for her sons, William and Harry. The brothers are currently very estranged due to a rift
Princess Diana gave her sons nicknames when they were little(Image: Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)
Prince William and Prince Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, had sweet nicknames for her beloved boys.
The Princess of Wales tragically died in Paris on August 30 1997 in a car accident while being pursued by paparazzi when William was just 15 and Harry was only 12 years old.
Though they are currently estranged, the brothers are bonded by their love for their mother. In 2007, American journalist Matt Lauer interviewed the brothers on NBC Today ahead of a remembrance concert held for Diana at Wembley Stadium. The correspondent asked William to explain the story behind his childhood nickname: Wombat.
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“She used to call you ‘Wombat,’ which is cute… when you’re seven,” the news anchor joked. “Yeah,” a 25-year-old William agreed. “I guess you don’t want your mates in the pub going, ‘Hey Wombat, how are you?'” Matt said. “It kind of stuck with me,” the future King responded, “I can’t get rid of it now.”
William and Harry were close with their mother(Image: Mirrorpix)
William revealed that his mother first started calling him Wombat in 1983, when he was a baby, during a six-week tour of Australia and New Zealand, his first major overseas visit.
“The first foreign trip we took William to was Australia and New Zealand,” Diana told her biographer Andrew Morton. “That was great – we were a family unit and everything was fine,” she said. “It was very tricky, mentally, for me, because the crowds were just something to be believed. My husband had never seen crowds like it and I sure as hell hadn’t and everyone kept saying it will all quieten down when you’ve had your first baby, and it never quietened down, never.”
“The wombat, you know, that’s the local animal,” William explained, “So I just basically got called that.”
“Not because I look like a wombat. Or maybe I do,” he added.
“You know what it was?” Harry playfully interjected, “He was still crawling at six.” “He was?” asked Matt. “He still couldn’t walk,” Harry joked. “He was still lazy.”
Matt then turned to William and said, “Alright, get him back. What’s his nickname?” William quickly replied, “Oh, Ginger. Whatever. You can call him whatever you want. Most of them I can’t call in front of here. You know, a bit rude. He’s got plenty.”
It turns out the Duke of Sussex does have quite a laundry list of nicknames. In his 2023 memoir Spare, Harry wrote that his father and brother call him ‘Harold’ despite his being named Henry Charles Albert David. His wife, Meghan Markle, calls him “H” or “Haz,” while his friends call him “Spike.”
Royal expert Robert Jobson revealed during the Channel 5 documentary William & Harry: Princes at War? that the late princess used to refer to her youngest child as “GKH.”
“She used to refer to Harry as GKH, Good King Harry, because she thought he’d probably be better equipped for the role in the future than William,” the expert stated. The acronym stemmed from a time William told his mother that he “didn’t want to be king,” and Harry joyfully volunteered to take on the position instead.
Prince William is set to succeed their father Charles as King of the United Kingdom and the other commonwealth realms.
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