Living up to ‘Louis’

Louis is a good name and the world now looks forward to seeing Prince Louis after his christening in a few weeks’ time, wrapped in a robe of Victorian lace. Louis is one of his father’s names, and is no doubt meant as a friendly gesture to the Prince of Wales, for it is well-known that he was very close to Louis, Earl Mountbatten, murdered in 1979. But the name also brings in the child’s great-grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh. Louis was the name of his beloved mother’s father – Admiral the Marquess of Milford Haven, as he became on cementing his British affiliations.

The pronunciation of the little Prince’s name will surely approximate to the French, despite German and American conventions of pronouncing the “s”. To French ears the name has an ancient royalist flavour. But if a prince can’t sound royal, who can?