Archie Harrison: How Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's Baby Name Blends British and American Sensibilities

The following first ran on Nameberry.com, and was excerpted for PEOPLE with permission.

Archie Harrison, the new royal baby name chosen by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry for their son, is a surprising choice that makes perfect sense.

Like the royal couple themselves, it combines British and American sensibilities, formality and informality, a long history with contemporary tastes and personal meaning.

Archie has been among the Top 100 boys’ names in the U.K. for the entire 21st century. As a short form for the ancient Archibald, Teutonic for “truly brave,” it fits in with the contemporary British trend for putting nickname-names — Alfie and Billy and Joe — on the birth certificate. Harry’s name itself is short for Henry, though his parents Princes Charles and Princess Diana used the proper form.

In the United States, Archie dropped from the Top 1,000 in the late 1980s under the negative influence of TV’s Archie Bunker, the All in the Family bigot that represented an old-school mindset that no parents wanted to pass on to their babies. Now it’s back, thanks to another TV character: redheaded Archie from the Archie comics, with the new show Riverdale. (And the Internet definitely picked up on that one.)

RELATED: The Cutest Little Bundle! See Photos of Baby Archie from Every Adorable Angle

Harrison means, literally, Harry’s son.

The newest royal baby has two first names, which follows American style, rather than the three each that Prince William and Kate Middleton‘s children have or the four that William and Harry themselves carry.

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