A fine name

Re: How the Queen spared Baby Archie the “badge of bastardy,” Colby Cosh, May 11 I found Colby Cosh’s article on the surname of the Royal Family to be quite interesting. It may however, be pointed out that the name has not been hidden. One has only to look at the marriage register of Princess Anne’s first wedding, that is, to Capt. Mark Phillips, to note the name was entered as the bride’s surname. Archie would be known by the subsidiary title of Earl of Dumbarton, were it not for the fact that his parents, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, chose to have him known without a title. Moreover, the Letters Patent of 1917, declared that any great-grandchildren of the sovereign other than those in direct line to succession to the throne, would not have any titles or bear the style of Royal Highness.

Mountbatten-windsor is a fine name, but in reality the family name of the Royal Family should be Mountbatten. Queen Victoria adopted Prince Albert’s family name of Saxe- Cobourg Gotha, which the Royal Family used up until World War I. Then George V had the family name changed to the more English-sounding name of Windsor, due to the anti-german feeling prevalent at the time. Normally speaking, a woman changes her name upon marriage, and therefore when the then Princess Elizabeth married Prince Phillip in 1947, her family name would have been changed to Mountbatten. Only the intervention of Winston Churchill, upon Queen Mary’s insistence, prevented that. Queen Mary claimed that her husband, George V, had declared the family name of Windsor to be used perpetually, regardless of any marriage.

Regina Silva Robinson, Toronto