Madonna. Beyoncé. Adele. The Queen.
They’re all famous faces that are SO ICONIC that they don’t need a last name for people to recognise who they are.
But…if the gang of misfits we know and love as ‘The Royals’ ever needed to use a last name for, say, their driver’s licence, or birth certificate, what do they write?
If you thought the answer was 'Windsor'...well, you'd be just a little bit wrong. So, you should brace yourselves, because the reason why is just a tiny complicated.
It turns out, up until the 1917 the royals didn't even need to use last names at all. They just used their first names and the house or dynasty they were a part of (think House of Tudor).
It was King George V (whose house name was Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) who decided in 1917 to change his last name to 'Windsor', named for one of the royal family's properties, due to anti-German sentiments at the start of World War I.
He also specified that Windsor was to become the official surname of the royal family.
Until 1960, when Queen Elizabeth II decreed the descendants of her and her husband, Prince Phillip, would use the hyphenated surname of Mountbatten-Windsor, a combination of both of their last names.
Top Comments
It wasn't the House of Tudor; after Tudor came thr Stuart's, the German Hanovers then Victoria the house of Saxe Coburg Gotha.
It's Mountbatten.
Prince Philip adopted the name Mountbatten when he became naturalised so that he could marry Princess Elizabeth... He was previously Prince Philip of Greece & Denmark. I have just started watching The Crown on Netflix so suddenly a little informed on the history of the family!!