Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and the Yahoo Answers website is now in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

jim c
Lv 4
jim c asked in Society & CultureRoyalty · 1 decade ago

Why Does The British Royal Family Use Windsor As Their Last Name?

They changed their name because they carried German names in WW1. I have heard that the "Royal" family is nothing but international bankers from Germany and wanted to know if this is correct?

6 Answers

Relevance
  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    they anglicised it, like most people from german extraction did around the times of WW1 and 2 for obvious reasons... also it's not good image to have a foreign name when you're a monarch.

  • 1 decade ago

    They changed from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in order to dissociate with the Germans during WW1.

    King George V was a very 'English' man and he did not speak any other languages unlike his father.

    He and his associates decided upon Windsor from a list of possibilities such as England, and some others like Tudor-Stuart.

    They're not just a bunch of German bankers at all! The Royal family spread much further than Germany and have blood within them from all over Europe. It's just that there were a lot of German descendants prior to WW1.

    The new family name is Windsor-Mountbatten.

    Surnames aren't important at all to the Monarchy so they can make it into whatever.

  • 1 decade ago

    They really don't have actual last names, but, other relatives did use German type names. The current queen is a descendant of William, Duke of Orange, who was a Norman: a people originally vikings living in France. The Royal family has ancestors from many countries, including German, one being the Battenburgs.

    The Royal family was in Britain long before banks were even invented, so calling them German bankers would be very inaccurate.

  • 1 decade ago

    Yep, George V changed it from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (which came from Victoria's husband Alfred) to Windsor because of anti-German sentiment during WW1.

    No, they're not just international bankers from Germany, that's total rubbish. The current Queen is directly descended from the Saxon royal house of Wessex (think Alfred the Great and co), as well as from William the Conqueror and on her mother's side she goes back many centuries with Scottish ancestry.

  • Anonymous
    5 years ago

    that's Windsor, however the Queen decreed that specific descendants -- people who don't have the form "Royal Highness" -- might desire to apply "Mountbatten-Windsor". in spite of the indisputable fact that, there has been some confusion approximately this, or perhaps Princess Anne used "Mountbatten-Windsor" while signing her wedding ceremony sign in at her first marriage. "Mountbatten" is the surname Prince Philip, the Queen's husband, observed earlier his marriage, taking it from the anglicization of the Germanic "Battenberg" that his maternal grandfather had observed. If the royal family contributors quite have been going to return to the previous "Saxe-Coburg and Gotha" call, which easily got here from Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert, then it could make extra experience to apply the royal "living house" call belonging to Prince Philip's family contributors, which advance into "Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg- Glucksberg". As you could locate, sticking to the user-friendly "Windsor," observed close to the top of international conflict I and interior the context of hostility in the direction of the Germans, makes lots extra experience. See under:

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    Windsor Castle. It's the most homey of their castles, and it sounds incredibly British.

    It's not a "last name", anyway. It's a HOUSE.

    Royalty doesn't have last names.

    They aren't German at all. The "Germans" who moved to Britain to take over the throne were British to begin with.

Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.