Surname of the Royal Family
Apr. 18th, 2010 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackSomeone at my party incautiously asked what the surname of the royal family is. Fortunately I couldn't remember much of the history at the moment, but then I went to look for a summary. This is extremely non-accurate, but I just wanted to give the general idea that it's all surprisingly vague and inconsistent.
As far as I was able to work out from wikipeida and the straight dope article, the royal family often belongs to a royal house with a different name than their nominal surname, if any. The originally Scottish Stuarts were comparatively simple -- or at any rate, any complexity in their surname was not recorded prominently on wikipedia. But then all the convenient male heirs had their heads chopped off, died, converted to catholicism, fled England, abdicated, or some combination of the above. I'll try to skip over all of the Lord-Protector-Cromwell and Old-Pretender-James and William-and-Mary-of-Orange and so on.
All the remaining British royalty for the last several hundred years have thus descended from Germanic royal houses with very long, multiply-hyphenated names, that Stuart female heirs married into. A history of the royal houses and surnames of monarchs since Victoria is very very very roughly as follows.
1. Queen Victoria, House of Hanover, descended from George I, House of Hanover, the first post-Stuart germanic king. The straight dope says she might have had some other surname (Guelph?) but this doesn't seem to be referenced anywhere else. So far, things are not too bad.
2. Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (later sometimes written as Saxe-Coburg-Gotha), which house is part of the House of Wettin.
3. Queen Victoria requests her descendants (Edward VII and his son George V) take name of "Wettin", but this never becomes that popular and people still refer to "Saxe-Coburg-Gotha".
4. George V, during world war one, admitted Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (and I suppose Wettin, and maybe Hanover?) were too German, and decreed all descendants of Victoria would instead be of the house and surname Windsor. Presumably because it has a slight phonetic similarity with Wettin, and was already associated with royalty. Once again, everything is nice and simple, but not for long.
5. At a similar time, Prince Loius of Battenburg, a cousin of the royal family, changes his name to Mountbatten. His daughter (the future queen mother-in-law and mother of Prince Philip), marries the greek royal family.
6. Elizabeth II marries Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark. "Prince Philip did not have a surname but he was of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg," Fortunately, we had a narrow escape from an EVEN MORE COMPLICATED German royal name, and in the nick of time, he renounced all his titles, and instead of House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (part of House Oldenburg), he re-adopted the surname his maternal grandfather adopted and his mother married out of, Mountbatten.
7. Elizabeth reaffirms that "Will and Pleasure that I and My children shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and that my descendants who marry and their descendants, shall bear the name of Windsor."
8. "the Queen confirmed that she and her children would continue to be known as the House and Family of Windsor, as would any agnatic [male line] descendants who enjoy the style of Royal Highness, and the title of Prince or Princess. Still, Elizabeth also decreed that her agnatic descendants who do not have that style and title would bear the surname Mountbatten-Windsor." (Apparently this is some sort of compromise between her and Prince Philip?)
I'm not sure what "of the Family of Windsor" means. The Queen doesn't have a surname as long as she's the Queen (is that right?) and the only people who DO would have surname Mountbatten-Windsor. But does that mean that if the Queen DID have a surname, it would be "Windsor" or "Mountbatten-Windsor"?
It could be worse. We could have a Royal Family called Stuart-Hanover-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg if we tried to keep the royal wife's surname without giving up the royal husband's[1].
But I hope it's clear that, while I don't fully understand it, I am sceptical of anyone who makes simple, sweeping pronouncements on the the way it is. (I'm in broad agreement to anyone who says it doesn't matter much and the Queen can go by whatever she likes, but the traditions are not detailed enough for there to be one necessarily correct answer.)
Citations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Windsor
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/884/what-did-prince-andrew-39-s-superiors-in-the-royal-navy-call-him
http://www.heraldica.org/topics/britain/prince_highness_docs.htm#1960
[1] One thing that annoys me is people who say "but, if we all double-barrel names on marriage, we can't do that if they're already double-barrelled", as if it's a telling point. It's a cogent rebuttal to anyone who thinks that we CAN go on combining wife's and husband's names into one forever, but so far as I'm aware no-one DOES think that, and whether you like it or not, combining your surnames on marriage is normally a "it suits us, we don't know for sure what our children will do" thing.
As far as I was able to work out from wikipeida and the straight dope article, the royal family often belongs to a royal house with a different name than their nominal surname, if any. The originally Scottish Stuarts were comparatively simple -- or at any rate, any complexity in their surname was not recorded prominently on wikipedia. But then all the convenient male heirs had their heads chopped off, died, converted to catholicism, fled England, abdicated, or some combination of the above. I'll try to skip over all of the Lord-Protector-Cromwell and Old-Pretender-James and William-and-Mary-of-Orange and so on.
All the remaining British royalty for the last several hundred years have thus descended from Germanic royal houses with very long, multiply-hyphenated names, that Stuart female heirs married into. A history of the royal houses and surnames of monarchs since Victoria is very very very roughly as follows.
1. Queen Victoria, House of Hanover, descended from George I, House of Hanover, the first post-Stuart germanic king. The straight dope says she might have had some other surname (Guelph?) but this doesn't seem to be referenced anywhere else. So far, things are not too bad.
2. Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (later sometimes written as Saxe-Coburg-Gotha), which house is part of the House of Wettin.
3. Queen Victoria requests her descendants (Edward VII and his son George V) take name of "Wettin", but this never becomes that popular and people still refer to "Saxe-Coburg-Gotha".
4. George V, during world war one, admitted Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (and I suppose Wettin, and maybe Hanover?) were too German, and decreed all descendants of Victoria would instead be of the house and surname Windsor. Presumably because it has a slight phonetic similarity with Wettin, and was already associated with royalty. Once again, everything is nice and simple, but not for long.
5. At a similar time, Prince Loius of Battenburg, a cousin of the royal family, changes his name to Mountbatten. His daughter (the future queen mother-in-law and mother of Prince Philip), marries the greek royal family.
6. Elizabeth II marries Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark. "Prince Philip did not have a surname but he was of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg," Fortunately, we had a narrow escape from an EVEN MORE COMPLICATED German royal name, and in the nick of time, he renounced all his titles, and instead of House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (part of House Oldenburg), he re-adopted the surname his maternal grandfather adopted and his mother married out of, Mountbatten.
7. Elizabeth reaffirms that "Will and Pleasure that I and My children shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and that my descendants who marry and their descendants, shall bear the name of Windsor."
8. "the Queen confirmed that she and her children would continue to be known as the House and Family of Windsor, as would any agnatic [male line] descendants who enjoy the style of Royal Highness, and the title of Prince or Princess. Still, Elizabeth also decreed that her agnatic descendants who do not have that style and title would bear the surname Mountbatten-Windsor." (Apparently this is some sort of compromise between her and Prince Philip?)
I'm not sure what "of the Family of Windsor" means. The Queen doesn't have a surname as long as she's the Queen (is that right?) and the only people who DO would have surname Mountbatten-Windsor. But does that mean that if the Queen DID have a surname, it would be "Windsor" or "Mountbatten-Windsor"?
It could be worse. We could have a Royal Family called Stuart-Hanover-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg if we tried to keep the royal wife's surname without giving up the royal husband's[1].
But I hope it's clear that, while I don't fully understand it, I am sceptical of anyone who makes simple, sweeping pronouncements on the the way it is. (I'm in broad agreement to anyone who says it doesn't matter much and the Queen can go by whatever she likes, but the traditions are not detailed enough for there to be one necessarily correct answer.)
Citations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Windsor
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/884/what-did-prince-andrew-39-s-superiors-in-the-royal-navy-call-him
http://www.heraldica.org/topics/britain/prince_highness_docs.htm#1960
[1] One thing that annoys me is people who say "but, if we all double-barrel names on marriage, we can't do that if they're already double-barrelled", as if it's a telling point. It's a cogent rebuttal to anyone who thinks that we CAN go on combining wife's and husband's names into one forever, but so far as I'm aware no-one DOES think that, and whether you like it or not, combining your surnames on marriage is normally a "it suits us, we don't know for sure what our children will do" thing.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-26 10:55 am (UTC)