Will the quarters in our pockets some day say ALEXANDER I?
It’s always possible, but hopefully Prince George, aka. George Alexander Louis, has a long time to think about it — there are two men ahead of him in line to the throne, and he’s busy being a toddler.
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Royals come well-supplied with given names — Charles and William have four apiece and George has three, making eleven names between the three of them.
(Many who are old enough to remember Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981 will have been startled to hear the Prince of Wales being addressed formally as “Charles Philip Arthur George”.)
However, all those names give new monarchs some flexibility when it comes to their own coronations. And they don’t always choose their first given name – George VI, the current Queen’s father, was christened Albert Frederick Arthur George, Edward VII was Albert Edward, and Queen Victoria was Alexandrina Victoria.
(Edward VIII, whose short and disastrous reign ended in his abdication, had seven given names.)
Not everything in the graphic below is fully resolved. England did have a King Philip (his day job was being king of Spain) but his powers were very limited, and it’s debatable whether he counts – in other words, whether a future King Philip would be Philip I or Philip II.
Arthur raises other issues: historians don’t agree on whether the King Arthur of legend actually existed. And if he did, he would have died hundreds of years before the Norman invasion of 1066, when the numbering system still used for monarchs starts.
– Infographic by Janet Cordahi
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