THE ROYAL HOUSE OF WINDSOR

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 6, 2 October 1917, Page 8

THE ROYAL HOUSE OF WINDSOR

NAME RICH IN ENGLISH ASSOGIAj TIONS.

The royal proclaniation which tie King signed recently, adopting for his house and family the name of Windsor, is a necessary result of the wise order which, he issued previously defining the future position. of members of his family., that order the great-grandsons.of the Sovereign, ezcopting the eldest, who would in due course succeed to the throne/ are to become commoners. For commoners a surname is requisite. Tlie Royal Family has hitherto had none. It dates buck: to ages .before the present system "of name 3 had grown up in Western Europe. It traces its descent from the great Gorman and-Saxon Kings. If a prince of the House of ■ Hanover succeeded . in. \ the eighteenth century it was because he was the great-grandson of .Tames I, ana because the Tudor blood of Henry \II flowed'in his veins. The Royal Family is English and Scottish in lineage, and the name now chosen very rightly aud judiciously emphasises that fact. The old royal names (says the Daily Mail") are not suitable for modern use. They 'aro :nicknames, .as Guriph has unwelcome associations) and Pl'antagenet, or they are derived from some; vocation,, as Stuart, which is probably the modern "steward" i or they aro Christian names, as Tudor, is believed to represent a Welsh form of Theodore. It was a well-established custom of great English and Norman families in the past to be known by the name of the place whero they lived or had. their family home, and this custom tho King has followed. Windsor in its associations with the Eoyal Family goes hack centuries, to-the very twilight of our history. There Arthur was said m the legend, quoted by Froissart, to'have assembled his knights of the Round Table.There a stronghold existed in the daya of the Heptarchy, and about it Edward tho Confessor oisned much-land. Everything* there speaks not only of a noble present but also of a glorious past iu times when the Hohenzollerns were petty cattle-robbers and tho Hapsburgs did not exist: The Kings of England conld have no worthier or more proper family name.