Baby joy for Harry and Meghan with tribute to the Queen and late Princess Diana

Prince Harry and Meghan announced that the infant, a first sibling for Archie, was born on Friday in California last night(June 6).

Lili is named after her great-grandmother the Queen – who was affectionately nicknamed Lilibet by her family – and her grandmother, the late Princess Diana.

A statement from the couple’s press secretary said that she was born at 11.40am on Friday “in the trusted care of the doctors and staff at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, California”.

William and Kate tweeted late on Sunday to say they were “We are all delighted by the happy news of the arrival of baby Lili. Congratulations to Harry, Meghan and Archie.”

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “The Queen, The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall, and The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have been informed and are delighted with the news of the birth of a daughter for The Duke and Duchess of Sussex.”

The new baby is the Queen’s 11th great-grandchild and the first of the Queen’s great-grandchildren to be born outside the UK.

Lilibet was first used when Princess Elizabeth was a toddler and unable to pronounce her own name properly.

Her grandfather, King George V, would affectionately call her ‘Lilibet’ imitating her own attempts to say Elizabeth.

The nickname stuck and from then on she became Lilibet to her family.