UK impatiently awaits royal baby name

WINDSOR, United Kingdom: Thrilled Britons were betting on baby names on Tuesday after Prince Harry and Meghan welcomed the royal family’s first known mixed-race child.Ending days of suspense, a smiling Harry announced on Monday the birth of the couple’s first child -- a son who will be seventh in the long line of British succession. It was a rare piece of good news for a nation exhausted by its endless fight over Brexit, a chance to celebrate royal traditions -- this time with a young American twist."I’ve been here six days. I slept out four days," John Loughrey, a self-proclaimed royal super fan told AFP outside Windsor Castle, where the couple wed last year. Meghan, a 37-year-old TV star with partial African American ancestry, has created a fresh buzz around the royal family."I want to see how he’ll look. As Meghan is mixed race, I’m curious to see" the baby, said Zahra Kibue, 34, who lived in Kenya before moving to England a few years ago. "It’s very important," said Kibue. "The monarchy is saying, the door is open, anybody could be of royal kinship."The "power couple", as the BBC dubbed them Monday, have bucked tradition since their wedding last May. Markle made waves in Britain by closing her own car door -- a task usually performed by aides.Meghan and Harry announced the birth of the seven-pound, three-ounce baby -- "It’s a boy!" -- to their 6.4 million followers on Instagram. Perhaps most notably, Meghan decided to ignore past practice by keeping the birth private and well away from the media’s eyes.Tabloid newspapers published unconfirmed details on how the night of the birth unfollowed. Most UK media assumed on Monday that Meghan had opted for a home delivery. But not The Daily Mail, which said on Tuesday that "overdue Meghan’s home birth dream was dashed as she was secretly whisked to a London hospital on Sunday by Harry and his Scotland Yard security team".The Sun, a competing tabloid, breathlessly reported that Meghan was a "week overdue" and ended up being secretly rushed to a £15,000-a-night London hospital before giving birth "at exactly sunrise".The Daily Mail claimed that the birth came precisely three minutes later than that. Either way, Meghan is now likely to take charge of raising Britain’s celebrity baby, royal biographer Penny Junor told AFP. "Most mothers call the shots and I think the days of royal children being whisked away to royal nurseries and ‘nanny knowing best’ is long gone," said Junor. "I think we’ll see very little of this child." Britain has a long and proud history of betting on just about everything, and the new arrival had the bookies busy for months.

from The News International - World http://bit.ly/2H7CEp1