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It was announced by Buckingham Palace on November 27, 2003, that the daughter of Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex would bear the surname Mountbatten-Windsor. While she has been styled as the more easily remembered title of Lady Louise Windsor, the young royal’s full name is Louise Alice Elizabeth Mary Mountbatten-Windsor. This saw the resurrection of Philip’s family name for the first time, in what will no doubt be a delight to the prince, who has always wanted his descendents to bear his name.

When his first child Charles, now the Prince of Wales, was born in 1948, Philip was told that he would not use his surname.

Philip reportedly shouted: “It makes me an amoeba, a bloody amoeba.”

When the Queen came to the throne in 1952, Winston Churchill’s Cabinet put pressure on her to continue using Windsor, chosen by George V in 1917 to replace he German name Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, because of the anti-German sentiment at the time.

Although she sympathised with her husband’s wishes, the Queen agreed that her descendants “should continue to bear the family name of Windsor”.

Philip complained at the time that he was the “only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his children”.

However, in 1960, the Queen made the concession that those of her descendants not entitled to the HRH style, and not princes or princesses, or female descendants who married, could use the Mountbatten name.

As Sophie and Edward decided not to give their children HRH titles, they were the first to take on Philip’s name.

Their decision was seen as both an opportunity for their children to have a more normal life, and as a gesture of affection towards the prince, who is known to be close to them.

In fact, Edward is expected to take on his father’s title of the Duke of Edinburgh when he dies.

In order to marry the Queen, Philip already had to renounce his born titles, give up his Greek nationality and become a naturalised Briton, and the indignity of not being able to pass on his name was apparently too much for him.

While he was born into the Greek and Danish royal families, his family had to flee Greece when he was just a baby after an anti-Monarchist revolution and he grew up in exile.

His uncle Lord Mounbatten of Burma persuaded him to adopt his mother’s Mountbatten surname, anglicised from Battenburg, until he married the Queen and became the Duke of Edinburgh.

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Prince Charles, who was very close to his great uncle Lord Mountbatten, also likely appreciated the gesture.

Lord Mountbatten was a strong figure in the family, who acted as a mentor to both Philip and the Princes of Wales, but was sadly killed by the IRA in 1979.

Louise’s name contains a number of other touching tributes to family members, including her 3x great-grandmother Louise of Hesse-Kassel and Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll.

Her middle names are a nod to Prince Philip’s mother Princess Alice, Queen Elizabeth II herself and the Queen Mother who bore the same name, and Sophie’s mother Mary Rhys-Jones, as well as Queen Mary, mother to George VI.

Prince Philip and Louise not only share a bond of their surname, but the young royal has actually taken up the unusual sport of carriage-driving.

Carriage-driving was popularised in the UK by the Duke himself, so he must be delighted that his granddaughter has taken to it like she has.

Louise loves horses, too, and has even been riding in the grounds around Balmoral with the Queen.

After Louise, there have been only two other children born with the surname Mountbatten-Windsor, one of whom is her brother James, Viscount Severn.

Then, last year Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had a baby, whose name is Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor.

Archie, like Louise and James, does not have an HRH title, and so bears the name of his great-grandfather.

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