The royal family are a bit greedy when it comes to names. After all, they often have several middle names, lengthy official titles, and even a different title depending on which country they are in. Yet most of the royal family don’t actually have a surname – and neither will the new royal baby, due in April.
As royal historian Marlene Eilers told Town and Country magazine, ‘The royal baby will not have a last name. The name on the birth certificate will say HRH Prince or Princess, and all three names of Cambridge.’
The new baby will have three names, just like big brother Prince George Alexander Louis and sister Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana. Bookies are currently touting Alice as the favourite for the newborn, despite there being no confirmation on the gender yet.
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering what the Queen’s surname is, we’ll tell you: it’s Mountbatten-Windsor. The double-barreled name was created upon the Queen’s marriage to Prince Phillip, as the Queen’s grandfather George V adopted the name Windsor (his actual surname Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was deemed too Germanic sounding for the time) and the Duke of Edinburgh was a Mountbatten, but it is used very rarely.
In fact, most of the royal family don’t actually have surnames, instead adopting the names of their titles. For example, Prince William and Prince Harry were known as William Wales and Henry Wales throughout their school days, after their father the Prince of Wales, while Prince George’s name is listed as George Cambridge at his primary school.