It’s historical. Surnames in Europe weren’t a uniform thing until the early 1800s under Napoleon.
An epithet like “of the house of Windsor” is approximately the same thing, and sure enough if they leave the royalty they usually take that as their surname (see also Harry, Prince of Wales, going as Harry Wales when he was in the military).
The point of a surname is to disambiguate between people (e.g. Mark, Jacob’s son, or John, the smith). For a prince, if you say Harry you already know which one they’re talking about, so they never needed to truly adopt surnames.
Tell that to Hatshepsut and the whole string of goddamn Thutmoses she had to put up with. (Yeah they had numbers but when you yell “Thutmose!” you don’t really want all of them.)
And applying that to royals in general, if they’re so unique they should be more creative with the names, dontcha think? So many Henrys and Louis
Yeah that’s the surname used by members of their family who don’t get the Prince/Princess title, since princesses and princes don’t need surnames for some reason.
What a weird system, rich people man. Also the article says “mountbatten -windsor” that’s a surname isn’t it?
It’s historical. Surnames in Europe weren’t a uniform thing until the early 1800s under Napoleon.
An epithet like “of the house of Windsor” is approximately the same thing, and sure enough if they leave the royalty they usually take that as their surname (see also Harry, Prince of Wales, going as Harry Wales when he was in the military).
The point of a surname is to disambiguate between people (e.g. Mark, Jacob’s son, or John, the smith). For a prince, if you say Harry you already know which one they’re talking about, so they never needed to truly adopt surnames.
Tell that to Hatshepsut and the whole string of goddamn Thutmoses she had to put up with. (Yeah they had numbers but when you yell “Thutmose!” you don’t really want all of them.)
And applying that to royals in general, if they’re so unique they should be more creative with the names, dontcha think? So many Henrys and Louis
Yeah that’s the surname used by members of their family who don’t get the Prince/Princess title, since princesses and princes don’t need surnames for some reason.