Prince William and Kate Middleton Had the Most Fascinating Secret Names While They Were Dating

If you are a royal, you sign up for a life where anonymity is a luxury. Prince William and Kate Middleton knew that, so to dodge attention during college, the future king (and eventually Middleton as well) adopted a pseudonym and enjoyed a somewhat regular student life. British journalist Robert Jobson revealed the code name in his book titled Catherine, The Princess of Wales .

William was known as ‘Steve’ in his orbit of close friends and allies at St Andrews in Scotland. The book further claimed that although he enrolled in college as William Wales, his pals addressed him as Steve to deviate the media from following his every move, including his blossoming romance with Middleton. In addition, he also made a deal with world media whereby he agreed to do a few photographs and brief interactions now and then in exchange for his privacy back in 2001, per OK! Magazine .

Jobson wrote in his book that William had an eye for spotting others who wanted to seemingly cash in on his royal status: “People who try to take advantage of me and get a piece of me, I spot it quickly and soon go off them. I’m not stupid.” However, Steve and William Wales weren’t the only secret names the now Prince used. There were a bunch of other monikers he resorted to, especially in the wake of his budding romance with Middleton.

“For weekends and holidays, he’d often whisk Catherine off to Highgrove or Sandringham or to a cottage on the Balmoral Estate,” continued Jobson. “Occasionally they checked into hotels, using the names Mr and Mrs Smith – which doubtless fooled no one.”

Additionally, back in 2007, the now royal couple headed to a romantic getaway to breathtaking Seychelles and checked into the hotel as Martin and Rosemary Middleton, according to journalist Marcia Moody’s biography of the Princess. Furthermore, after they tied the knot in 2011, their names were saved as Danny Collins and Daphne Clark in their aides’ contact lists, in a cheeky reference to their titles of Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, according to Daily Star.

Interestingly, back in university, a game of ‘Never Have I Ever’ made their romance public to their group of friends. Though they began as friends, by September 2002, they moved out of the friend zone and began living together along with two classmates. As Jobson further wrote in his book, eventually, “among the student community, it was an open secret that they were a couple,” per the New York Post.

William’s ex-girlfriend Carly Massy-Birch, ‘perhaps unwittingly, exposed William’s secret love affair with Catherine’ at a booze-filled dinner party. “[Massy-Birch] announced, ‘I’ve never dated two people in this room, knowing full well that William was the only one who had because Kate was sitting next to him,” a guest present at that evening told royal author Katie Nicholl for her 2013 book titled Kate: The Future Queen . Years later, in their engagement interview in 2010, William affirmed, “We moved in together as friends. We lived with a couple of others, as well, and it just sort of blossomed from there, really. We just saw more of each other, hung out a bit more, and did stuff.”