Prince Harry drops royal surname after moving to LA

The former prince has dropped both his royal title and his family surname. Photo / Getty Images

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The Duke of Sussex has filed the paperwork his first official new venture since quitting the royals, and publically dropped his royal surname.

In documents registering new sustainable tour firm Travalyst, Prince Harry did not include HRH title, nor the family name Mountbatten-Windsor, reports The Sun.

He's also ditched the surname Wales, which he used at school and in the Army.

The couple recently relocated to California. Photo / Getty Images

On official documents Harry is listed as: 'Individual Person with Significant Control'.

Under nature of business, it is filed as "other professional, scientific and technical activities not elsewhere classified".

Last week Harry and his wife Meghan suffered an embarrassing public gaffe as they launched their new charitable foundation.

After the ex-royal couple revealed they have plans to start a new non-profit organisation called Archewell, fans who visited archewellfoundation.com in a quest to find out more about the new organisation were shocked when the URL redirected to the music video for Kanye West's 2005 smash hit Gold Digger, in which West raps disparagingly about a woman who only dates rich men.

It appears Harry and Meghan have failed to register archewellfoundation.com as a domain name, with the website instead being snapped up by someone else – who cheekily diverted fans to the less-than-flattering song.

The foundation will replace their Sussex Royal brand, after the Queen reportedly ordered them to stop using the word "royal" once they stepped down as senior working royals.

Details about the project were first reported in the Daily Telegraph (UK), which obtained paperwork the couple filed in the US last month showing they were looking to create their own charity, volunteering service and wide-ranging website.

For now, the pair are focusing their attentions on the coronavirus crisis, they said.

"Like you, our focus is on supporting efforts to tackle the global Covid-19 pandemic but faced with this information coming to light, we felt compelled to share the story of how this came to be," they said in a statement.

Harry, 35 and Meghan, 38, also revealed that Arche, the Greek word in the organisation meaning sources of action, was also the inspiration behind their 10-month-old son's name, Archie Mountbatten-Windsor.