Kate Middleton Has Some Very Sweet Nicknames

She is known by many names. Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales, the Duchess of Rothesay, the Countess of Chester. But to her family and friends and the people who love her, Kate Middleton has a few choice nicknames she answers to. We should go ahead and keep calling her Your Royal Highness if we happen to meet her out in the wild, but her family and friends have a few other, less formal options.

Kate is technically a nickname.

While the world knows her as Kate Middleton, this is not actually her name. Her parents Carole and Michael Middleton named her Catherine, and that was always the name she used. She’s not even a Middleton anymore and has not been since she married Prince William in 2011, but for some reason she is almost always referred to as Kate Middleton by the media. Despite the fact that her name is now Catherine, Princess of Wales. It looks as though the British media initially started to refer to her as Kate Middleton in the decade she was dating Prince William before they married. In fact, she was often cruelly referred to as “Waity Katie” in the tabloids because they dated for so long. Fortunately, that unkind nickname died off, but Kate has stuck.

She was Squeak to her sister’s Pip.

When Middleton was still a child, long before she became an HRH, her school friends gave her a nickname. A nickname based on some guinea pigs, in fact. “There was one called Pip and one called Squeak, so my sister was called Pip and I was Squeak,” she told friends at St. Andrew’s University, per OK magazine.

Prince Harry called her Cath.

There was a time when Kate Middleton and her brother-in-law Prince Harry were very close. Close enough that he had a nickname of his own for her. As he wrote in his memoir Spare, Prince Harry simply referred to Kate Middleton as “Cath.” Hopefully one of these day, the family will get back together and get back to their fun nicknames.

Big Willie loves his Babykins.

Royal fans might have heard about Prince William’s nickname of Big Willie, bestowed upon him by Middleton herself before the two were married. But the often reserved future king has his own mushy nickname for his wife. He reportedly calls her “Babykins,” according to royal expert Ingrid Seward. She told The Sun, “Prince William was Big Willie, I think. Kate was Babykins.”

She is both Mama and Mummy to her children.

While 6-year-old Prince Louis calls his mother “Mummy,” as he did when he comforted her after Queen Elizabeth’s death in 2022, his 10-year-old brother Prince George was seen calling her “Mama.” As for 9-year-old Princess Charlotte, we can only assume she chose one or the other. Or perhaps, being the perfect model royal, she went with Your Royal Highness for a real sense of occasion.