Wessex baby named Louise, but not HRH
CLAIRE SMITH
csmith@scotsman.com
THE EARL and Countess of Wessex have named their baby daughter Louise Alice Elizabeth Mary Mountbatten Windsor.
The latest addition to the Royal Family, born by emergency caesarian section on 8 November will be known as Lady Louise Windsor.
The earl and countess may have chosen well-favoured royal names for their daughter, but they have broken with tradition by including the name Mountbatten.
The parents waited 17 days before officially naming their daughter, who spent a fortnight in a special baby care unit after being born several weeks premature.
The earl and countess, who lost a baby in December 2001, faced an anxious wait before being allowed to bring their daughter home to Bagshot Park in Surrey.
The inclusion of his family name will please Prince Philip, whose wish to include it in Prince Charles’s name was turned down.
A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said the earl and countess had decided not to style their daughter Her Royal Highness. When Prince Edward married Sophie Rhys-Jones, who worked in PR, at Windsor in 1999, the couple let it be known that they did not wish their children to be known by the title.
The Queen’s third son was given the title the Earl of Wessex on his marriage and it was announced at the time that he would inherit the title of Duke of Edinburgh.
Yesterday, Buckingham Palace confirmed that with the permission of the Queen the new royal baby will be known as Lady Louise, as is traditional for the daughter of an earl.
Although her full surname is Mountbatten Windsor, she will only use Windsor.
Lady Louise is now with her parents at home after a fortnight in hospital.
The baby, due at the beginning of December, was born several weeks premature, after her mother was rushed to Frimley Park NHS Hospital for an emergency Caesarian.
The newborn was transferred to a specialist neo-natal unit at St George’s Hospital, Tooting, south London and was finally allowed to go home last Sunday.
VICTORIA'S LEGACY: CATALOGUE OF NAMES
LOUISE may not sound very regal, but it has been a name favoured by the Royal Family for more than a century.
Queen Victoria named one of her children Louise, and the name has continued to be popular as a third or fourth choice for Royal baby girls.
As the mother of nine children, with four names apiece, Queen Victoria’s brood provides a useful reference for Royal parents looking for inspiration.
And the Earl of Wessex and his wife have followed the family tradition, choosing a long list of solid, Victorian family names for their daughter.
Whereas the Princess Royal broke with tradition to name her daughter Zara, the Duke and Duchess of York gave tradition a new twist by naming their first daughter Beatrice and second Eugenie. Beatrice was the name of Queen Victoria’s fifth daughter, who named her own daughter Eugenie.
The new baby’s names are almost a rearrangement of the name of the Princess Royal - Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise.
By choosing the name Elizabeth, the couple have honoured the Queen and the late Queen Mother.
And Mary, another favoured choice of royalty, also happens to be the name of the mother of the Countess of Wessex - Mary Rhys-Jones.
By including Mountbatten they have pleased the earl’s father, the Duke of Edinburgh, by commemorating his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was killed by the IRA in 1979, when a bomb exploded on a boat in which he was sailing at his holiday home in County Sligo.
Ironically, Mountbatten was a name concocted by the Battenburg family to avoid sounding German during the First World War, when it was considered important to gain public favour.
The strength of anti-German feeling also led the Royal Family to change its own name, from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor.