British dynastic names

While Tudor and Stuart are clearly family names (I have never seen the Stuarts called "the House of Scotland"), the houses of Hanover and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha are named fpror their domains. The family names would have been Welf/Guelph and Wettin, respectively.

a) Was there a conscious decision for this stylistic change or did it just happen somehow?

b) According to the wiki, Princess Charlotte of Wales was quite smitten with a Prussian prince in 1814, before the abortive engagment with the Prince of Orange and the marriage to Leopold of S-C. If the marriage with a second-degree cousin of the Prussian king would have become reality, what would probably the new dynastic name have been?
House of Prussia? Unlikely, since no peronal union would have resulted and there still was a ruling House of Prussia.
House of Hohenzollern? That sounds a bit odd, somehow.

Any opinions?
 
The change probably occured because typically royalty do not have last names. There are family names for instance (ie. Habsburg), but the dynastic names are more important ("of Austria," ect.) There's a reason that even today, the former German Imperial family bear the surname von Pruessen, and not Hohenzollern.

The name Stuart derived from the position the family held; that of High Stewart of Scotland, which the Walter Stewart adopted. Stuart is merely the French spelling. Tudor, likewise, is an Anglicized name, as the family descends from the Welsh Prince Rhys ap Tewdwr.

In my sig I'm actually doing a TL based on Charlotte where she does marry the Prussian Prince, but it's on hold right now. Had she married him and had children, they would've held the titles Prince of Prussia as well as any British titles. Of Prussia would be the dynastic name, much as Saxe-Goburg-Gotha was. The Coburgs were merely a line of the House of Wettin, but Edward VII and George V was never known as such, it was the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

It's not a big issue really, as the name is rarely referenced. Any children Charlotte has with the Prussian, while being of the House of Hohenzollern and technically "of Prussia" would be considered Princes/Princesses of the United Kingdom. None of Victoria's children by Albert used the dynastic name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, although alongside their British titles they were also Dukes/Duchesses in Saxony. The change to Windsor was merely because of anti-German hysteria. Even today, while Elizabeth has decreed the dynasty is Windsor-Mountbatten, it's only used by extended members who have no title. Those that do have titles are not "so and so Windsor." Charles' sons, for instance, are "of Wales."
 
It's switched back and forth quite a bit, enough that I don't think there was ever really a rule to switch. I think it's purely on the preferences of either historians (if the dynasty's named retrospectively) or the monarchs and their publicists (if the dynasty's named contemporarily).

The full list is:
House of Wessex (title)
House of Knýtlinga (family name ("Knut's Descendants"))
House of Godwin (personal name of founder)
House of Normandy (title)
House of Plantagenet (family name)
House of Lancaster (title)
House of York (title)
House of Tudor (surname)
House of Stuart (surname)
House of Hanover (title)
House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (title)
House of Windsor (assumed surname)

The switch from SCG to Windsor was made by royal proclamation, and I think any future monarch could switch it to anything they like through the same method.
 
The Plantagenets were, of course, originally the House of Anjou. The anomalous rule of King Stephen is sometimes housed under House of Blois. Both French territorial designations.
 
Hannover and Saxe-Coburg and Gotha come from the German tradition where all the small independent countries basically caused many ruling dynasties to add a terratorial qualifier, or just become 'von [country]' in the cases such as the Welfs and the Wettins where they just got absolutely everywhere. You didn't see it in this country because there just weren't as many titles going around.

And this includes the ones which we consider to have had 'family' names. The von Habsburgs, the Liechtensteiners and the Hohenzollerns all took their names from ancestral properties. The Royal Family taking the surname of 'Windsor' is thus a very long rooted tradition when it comes to dynastic naming.

The Tudors are a major exception to all this though, as Welsh naming traditionally used the patrinomic style common in Norse and Slavic conventions (hence for example the Grand Duke Nikholai Alexandrovich was the son of Alexander II, while Leif Erikson was the son of Erik the Red). For welsh the phrasing 'ap x' (also 'ab x' in Medieval Welsh) meant son of x, while a daughter would be 'ferch x'. Rhys ap Tewdwr was king of Deheubarth (and his dynasty is sometimes referre to as 'of Dinefwr' after the family seat), son of Tewdwr ap Cadell.

And at times when there were several important figures running around at the same time with the same names and patrinomics, or to emphasise a prestigious descent, they'd go into the grandfathers or beyond as well, hence Tewdwr ap Cadell's father was Cadell ab Einion ab Owain ab Hwel Dda, emphasising his descent from Hwel Dda (who is so important he aquired the nickname 'the Good' rather than using a patrinomic') who ruled most of Wales in the mid 10th Century.

Over time, many of these patrinomics did become, in essence, regular surnames as happened with the Tewdwrs.

EDIT: And on the subject of future changes, while Windsor is the royal dyanstic name, the family go to school as 'Wales', 'York' etc. and this extends to the army (William at least started as 'Lietenant Wales', and I don't think they've switched to using Cambridge instead). Meanwhile once you get beyond the ones considered 'Royal' and into the granchildren of Dukes and so forth then they'll often switch to using 'Mountbatten-Windsor'.
 
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I remember an almanac-type book from the 1930s that anxiously tried to avoid the name "Saxe-Coburg-Gotha" in its regnal list. Victoria they could present as last monarch of the House of Hanover and George V as the first of the House of Windsor, but for Edward VII they invented a strange "House of Kent". :confused:
 
I've seen at least one instance where the House of Normandy was referred to as the FitzRobert dynasty
 
So the Hanovers were Welfs? Wow that family lasted forever.

Stephenson has a rather charming bit in his Baroque Cycle where Sophia of Hannover's husband is employing Liebniz to go over to Italy and prove the link so that he can assure everyone that he has just as fine a lineage as his wife:D
 
So the Hanovers were Welfs? Wow that family lasted forever.

A branch of them, yes.

The Capetians lasted extremely long too! While the main line went extinct in 1328, they were merely succeeded by another branch of the family, the Valois, which died out with Charles VIII, who was succeeded by his relative Louis XII, the Duke of Orléans and thus part of a branch of the Valois, the Valois-Orléans. Louis XII had no sons, but instead had his eldest daughter married to another somewhat distant relative, François Ier... who was of the branch Valois-Angoulême. When they finally kicked the bucket, Henri and the Bourbons came to the throne... yet another branch of the Capetians.

The reason for this was that only Famille du Roi (The reigning king, the Queen, their children, the Queen Dowager, and the grandchildren of the King's son) were accorded the rank of style of royal highness and bore the name "of France." More distant relatives were the Princes du Sang and derived their name from their appenages; this essentially meant that when a king died the famille du roi shrank in size and male children who succeeded their father's appanges bore that as their name rather than de France.

Had Charles X not been deposed, Henri V would've been of the House of d'Artois and his sister was known as Louise d'Artois, because as the grandchildren of Charles X, formally the Count of Artois, they formed a branch of the Bourbon dynasty, much as Louis XIV's brother, Philippe, formed the branch of Bourbon-Orléans. There were also other numerous branches of the Bourbon dynasty, both legitimate (Condé, Conti, ect) and illegitimate (Vendôme, Maine, Penthièvre). And despite the line of the Valois going extinct, there still existed illegitimate lines such as Orléans-Longueville. This mess of lines and branches of the Capetians was also the reason why Louis XVI was ridiculed in the midst of the revolution as Louis Capet, because he was of a branch of the Capetian dynasty, although he as king had no surname.
 
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