Princess Eugenie has shared the name she’s chosen for her baby daughter and it’s got some very regal connections.
The newest member of the Royal Family has been named Adelaide Elizabeth Annina with the princess sharing that the choice celebrated ”three people we love and admire, past and present”.
And Adelaide has a very regal pedigree all of its own.
It’s the name of an often forgotten but very significant queen consort. Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen was the wife of William IV and helped change her husband from a carousing lover of the high life into a monarch who was so sensible he had to be forced into a coronation as he didn’t want to waste money on the celebration.
Queen Adelaide was consort from 1830 for seven years and during that time she was also close to her niece, the heir to her husband’s throne. That princess, Victoria, was just 11 when Adelaide became queen and she relied on her aunt for some fun and exposure to real life as her own mother wanted to keep her cloistered up inside Kensington Palace to ensure as much control over her as possible.
Once she took the throne, the new Queen Victoria never forgot the kindness of her aunt. Queen Adelaide remained close to Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert. In fact, their affection for her can be seen in the name they gave their first born child. The little girl was named Victoria after her mother and her second name was Adelaide, in honour of her aunt.
Adelaide was a relatively popular name with some royal families in the first half of the 19th century. Queen Victoria’s half sister, Feodora, named her daughter Adelheid, the German variant.
However, it was most popular with royalty in the early Middle Ages when it was used for several high born women. William the Conqueror and his wife, Matilda of Flanders, used the medieval variant of the name, Adeliza, for one of their daughters. Adeliza is sometimes recorded as Adelida or Adelaide in documents and is mentioned in one source as a potential bride for Harold Godwineson before he and William fell out spectacularly, leading to the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England.
The name Adelaide is related to the name Adela, with both coming from the same root, Adal, which means noble. As Adal became more and more used, some variants added ‘heid’ which means kind. In the Middle Ages, both Adela and Adeliza were well used and William the Conqueror and Matilda had daughters with both names. As well as Adeliza, they had a child called Adela and for a very good reason. Matilda’s mother had been Adela, daughter of the King and Queen of France. William was keen to show his royal connections as he himself was illegitimate. Giving two of his daughters such a regal name was one way of doing that.
In 11201, Adeliza also became the name of a Queen of England. WIlliam and Matilda’s son, Henry I, married Adeliza of Louvain. Queen Adeliza was Henry’s second wife and was much younger than him. He had married again after the death of his only legitimate son, William Adelin, in the White Ship disaster of 1120. It was hoped that Queen Adeliza would bring another heir but by the time Henry died, in 1135, they remained childless. His legitimate daughter, Matilda, would try to claim the throne instead. However,, her claim was unsuccessful against that of Stephen, Count of Blois and son of the Adela who was the daughter of William the Conqueror and Matilda.
Adelaide wasn’t used by royals in Britain for several centuries until the marriage of the future William IV to Adelaide of Saxe-Meinngen. And not long after they became king and queen, royal relations chose the name Adelaide for their daughter, in honour of the new consort. In 1833, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, welcomed a baby girl called Mary Adelaide who would grow up to marry Prince Francis of Teck. They had one daughter who had a string of middle names, although none of them was Adelaide. She became known as Mary or May and in 1893 she married the future King George V. Mary Adelaide was therefore the grandmother of two kings, Edward VIII and George VI.
Now, the choice of Princess Eugenie and her husband, Jack Brooksbank, has brought the name Adelaide back into the regal fold again.
