How did a Dutch columnist know the royal baby would be called Archie?

On Tuesday, Dutch columnist and ‘royalty watcher’ Aaf Brandt Corstius wrote a piece in which she said the duke and duchess of Sussex’s first baby would be called Archibald. On Wednesday she was almost proved right.

In her column, Brandt Corstius wrote about how the Sussexes would have probably ‘checked all those polls and bookmakers and have crossed all the names they came up with off their list.’

Then, she wrote, they would ‘choose the only name on earth that others had not yet thought of as a good one for their baby. Which is Archibald. Archibald it will be, mark my words.’

On Wednesday, the baby’s name was formally announced as Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor – Archie being the short form of Archibald.

‘Someone sent me a Whatsapp message,’ said Brandt Corstius, who was out shopping at the time of the announcement.’Then I got a couple more and then I thought “oh what a laugh”.’

She says she came up with the name after googling for ‘unusual names’. ‘Archibald was the first unusual one that I found, starting with A, so that is what I wrote down. That was it,’ she told the Volkskrant.

‘I was really trying to come up with a name that no-one would think off, because everyone was betting all that money,’ she said. ‘I am now telling everyone that I know Meghan, and people believe that as well.’