Why Did the Royal Family Change its Name to Windsor?

Queen Elizabeth II’s death renewed interest in the British royal family internationally. Outreigning Queen Victoria by seven years, she was the longest-reigning monarch in British history. She represented stability in the UK following the British Empire’s weakening after World War II.

Something I learned from my personal increased interest is that the British Royals aren’t originally Windsors. In fact, they aren’t even originally British.

So, why did this non-British British royal family take the name Windsor?

German Roots

The German Duke Ernst Anton of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld became the first duke of Saxe-Coburg—or Ernst I—in 1826. His sister—Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld—was the mother of Britain’s Queen Victoria. Ernst’s second son, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, married his cousin Victoria in 1840. 

Victoria herself was of 100 percent German stock. Her father was Prince Edward—King George III’s fourth son—of the House of Hanover.

It was not uncommon for German royalty to marry into other royal families and rule over other countries. 

In fact, the three principal monarchs of World War I: Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, King George V of Great Britain, and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, were cousins and descended from King George II of Britain.

Ethnic German monarchs in 1914 included Albert I (Belgium), Wilhelm of Wied (Albania), Ferdinand I (Bulgaria), Karl I (Romania).

Just as children take their father’s last name, monarchs took the name of the house of their father—which meant taking the name of the land their father’s family ruled.

King Edward VII, Victoria’s eldest son, thus, became the first monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gothe—a much more in-your-face German-sounding name than the House of Hanover. 

Edward VII ruled for the first decade of the 20th century until his death in 1910. His first son Prince Albert Victor had died before Victoria’s death. So, his second son, George V, took the throne as the second and last monarch named after Saxe-Coburg-Gothe.

Making the British royal family even more German, George V had married the German Princess Mary of Teck.

British monarchs, however, only ever signed their first names. So, why the need to add an English surname?

Removing all Things German

In 1917, British subjects understandably felt intense anti-German sentiment. 

Sporadic anti-German riots had broken out since 1914. This included targeting anyone with a German last name. Mobs even attacked bakeries since that profession was associated with Germans.

It was simply unpatriotic to have a German last name and could arouse suspicion. Even German Shepherds were no longer called German Shepherds but Alsatians, after the region Alsace-Lorraine. 

The final straw was a German air raid that destroyed a school in East End, London, killing 18 children. Ironically, bombers from Gotha carried out the raid.

But George V had already decided to change the family name that spring—partly at the advice of Arthur John Bigge who had served as private secretary to Victoria. 

At a Privy Council meeting on July 17, 1917, George V declared that “all descendants in the male line of Queen Victoria, who are subjects of these realms, other than female descendants who marry or who have married, shall bear the name of Windsor.”

He took the new name as both the family’s house name and its surname.

So, Why Windsor?

Names of past British royal houses were rejected. Prime Minister Herbert Asquith opposed the name Tudor for its association with King Henry VIII and Bloody Mary. They even considered settling for “England.”

After the East End bombing, they needed to come up with something quickly. Lord Stamfordham, George V’s private secretary, suggested Windsor. The name had been associated with the English monarch going back to the Normans. Plus, he was in Windsor Castle when he thought of it.

Paranoid government officials and royal advisers did not dream up rumblings of discontent among the British public over the Royals’ German name.

On July 17, 1917, Lord Stamfordham received a letter from a Colonel Unsworth, stating: “Their strong efforts to remove, in every possible way, the German influence and power from the Court will have its fruit in the affection and loyalty of their devoted subjects.”

After George V proclaimed the name change, the Guardian approvingly editorialized: “The British Royal Family will no doubt be known in future simply as the House of Britain. War or no war, the change would be sensible, for nothing but pedantry keeps alive the German title.”

Belgium’s King Albert I—also of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gothe—followed in George V’s footsteps in 1920. The Belgian royal family partly reversed that in 2017, reintroducing the Saxe-Coburg-Gothe shield into its coat of arms.

In the long term, the name change helped tie the British public strongly to the royal family. It would have been awkward, indeed, if, in 1940, King George VI still carried the German name.