Royal names are often all about tradition but even princes and princesses can’t resist trying to match their choice to the festive season when babies arrive at Christmas. And one very unusual middle name, shared by two very famous royal women, is an unusual twist on Christmas theme and might be just the answer if you’re looking for inspiration for a festive season baby.
The royals in question are Princess Alexandra, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, who was born on Christmas Day and Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester who is the longest lived member of the House of Windsor.
The name in question is ‘Christabel’. It’s still quite rarely used but you can see why it’s been picked for festive season babies as it’s got a real Christmas feel about it.
The first Windsor to bear it was Princess Alice who actually brought the name into the royal fold through marriage. She was born Lady Alice Montagu Douglas Scott and became royal when she married Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the third son of King George V and Queen Mary.
(Hay Wrightson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
She was born on Christmas Day 1901 at Montagu House in London and was christened Alice Christabel with her parents choosing her middle name because of the date of her birth.
Alice married Prince Henry in 1935 in the Private Chapel at Buckingham Palace and she set her own wedding day rules by marrying in a pink dress. She quickly became a popular member of the Royal Family and clearly made an impression on her new relatives. For just a year later, her brother and sister in law used one of her names for their own Christmas Day baby.
(ROTA / i-Images)
Prince Henry’s younger brother, Prince George, had married Princess Marina of Greece in 1934 and their son, Edward, was born in October 1935. Their second baby was born on Christmas Day 1936, just two weeks after the Abdication of George and Henry’s brother, King Edward VIII, and the accession of another sibling as King George VI. It was a difficult time for the Windsors and the arrival of George and Marina’s baby was highly anticipated as a moment of joy in the midst of a crisis that had rocked the throne.
George and Marina’s Christmas Day baby was a little girl and they named her Alexandra Helen Elizabeth Olga Christabel, with her last name a nod to both her new aunt, Alice, and her arrival date, Christmas Day.
The name means combines Christ with ‘belle’, meaning beautiful, and became well known in the 1910s and 1920s through Christabel Pankhurst who was one of the leading suffragettes campaigning to get all women the vote. Interestingly, Princess Alexandra’s grandfather, King George V, had made Christabel Pankhurst a Dame in his final New Year’s Honours list, published as 1936 got under way. He died in January 1936, eleven months before his third granddaughter was born.
The name Christabel hasn’t made it into more modern generations of the Royal Family and it remains one of the lesser used names at the moment. It’s never been in the Top 100 in the UK or the US and remains a rare but distinctive choice for parents. It has shown some signs of a revival and usually comes into its most popular wave around Christmas. And it provides an unusual way of marking the festive season for babies, royal and otherwise.
