Kate Expectations: The Full Story On Why World Still Can’t Get Her Name Right
Catherine, Princess of Wales and Prince William, Credit: Kensington Palace
Four months ago, sitting in front of a camera for the first time as the editor of my own newsletter, I did something I have done on autopilot for the better part of twenty four years working in America. I called her Kate. Princess Kate. I didn’t pause over it, didn’t weigh it, didn’t think about it for a single second… it was just the word that came out, the same way you don’t think about how you say your own name. Then the comments arrived.
Not a hate attack exactly. More like a small, well drilled battalion of what I can only describe as loyal royalists, the sort who treat Debrett’s (the infamous British institution founded in 1769 that is an authority on modern etiquette) like a statute book and quote royal protocol the way a barrister (fancy British lawyer in a wig) quotes case law. Comments rolled in like “this royal commentator is bullshit, he can’t even get her name right” and “her name is CATHERINE, have some respect,” again and again, with the weary patience of people who have been waiting years for someone in the press to get it right. Some were civil about it. Some were absolutely not. And here is the uncomfortable bit: on the substance, every single one of them was correct.
