Meghan Markle Reveals New 'Two-Word' Nickname for Prince Harry in International Women's Day Tribute

Meghan Markle gave royal watchers something to pause over on Sunday when she credited her husband, Prince Harry, as 'Papa Sussex' in a tender Instagram post for International Women's Day, appearing to be the first time the Duke of Sussex has been publicly referred to by the affectionate two-word nickname.

The post, shared on March 8, 2026, featured a photograph of the Duchess of Sussex, 44, kissing and cuddling their four-year-old daughter, Princess Lilibet, as the pair sat on rocks with the sea stretching out before them. 'For the woman she will one day be... Happy International Women's Day,' Meghan wrote in the caption, with a simple photography credit that followed underneath reading 'Papa Sussex.'

Meghan has made a quiet tradition of marking International Women's Day with personal posts offering glimpses into her family life. Last year, she shared a carousel of images that included a rare photograph of Lilibet on a boat, cradled in Harry's arms, alongside a childhood snapshot of Meghan with her mother, Doria Ragland. The year before that, she appeared on a panel at SXSW in Austin, Texas, speaking alongside journalist Katie Couric and author Nancy Wang Yuen about how women shape the stories the world tells about itself. For Meghan, the occasion clearly runs deeper than a calendar date.

A Nickname With Sussex at Its Heart

What made Sunday's post linger longer than most was not the photograph itself, rare as it was, but those two words in the photo credit. The Sussexes' children are understood to call their father 'Papa,' a detail that has cropped up in interviews and royal coverage over the years. Placing 'Sussex' beside it turns something personal into something carrying a faint echo of the couple's formal identity — a private term rooted in the public title that has come to define much of who Harry and Meghan are in the years since they left royal life.​

The Duke of Sussex title was granted to Harry by his late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, on the morning of his wedding to Meghan in May 2018. It remains, in many respects, the most visible link between the couple and the institution they stepped back from in 2020. Meghan has been candid about what it means to her. In an interview with People magazine, she said, 'It's our shared name as a family, and I guess I hadn't recognised how meaningful that would be to me until we had children. I love that that is something that Archie, Lili, H and I all have together. It means a lot to me.'

The Sussex Family's Private World

Neither Harry nor the couple's 6-year-old son, Prince Archie, appeared in the image. The photograph is believed to have been taken near the family's Montecito home in California, where they have lived for roughly six years since departing their senior royal roles. The setting, sun-washed and coastal, is consistent with the occasional images the Sussexes have chosen to share publicly.

The post came just weeks after Meghan offered what observers described as the clearest photograph yet of Princess Lilibet's face, in a Valentine's Day image showing Harry holding their daughter as she played with a bunch of red balloons. That post was captioned 'These two + Archie = my forever Valentines.' The couple have been consistently deliberate about which images of their children appear online, a position that has not shifted even as Meghan's Instagram presence has become more regular.​

Whether 'Papa Sussex' is an established nickname used privately within the family, a spontaneous caption choice on a meaningful morning, or something Meghan was aware would spark conversation is genuinely not clear from the post alone. It is believed this is the first time the name has surfaced in any public context, though that has not been independently confirmed.​

What it offers, at minimum, is a small and unusually unguarded detail from a household that has otherwise been careful about how much it shares. At most, it quietly reframes what the Sussex title has come to mean to the family carrying it — not as a relic of royal service, but as something passed, informally, from a father to his children on a Sunday afternoon by the sea.​