EXCLUSIVE: Why the World Won’t Stop Disrespecting Princess Catherine. Or is it Kate?

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.

As a journalist who strives for the truth and to get everything right, it rattled me, which after nearly three decades in entertainment journalism, doesn’t happen often. I have called her Kate in print, on television and now in newsletters since Kate Middleton (back then) started dating Prince William in college (university, to the UK folks, before I get shouted at for that too). Everyone I have ever worked alongside has called her Kate. It wasn’t laziness and it certainly wasn’t disrespect. It was simply the word sitting in front of me.

So here’s the full story as to why Kate isn’t called Catherine in America, and where I’m landing from now on…

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