- Kate Middleton had her "heart set" on a completely different name for her eldest son, Prince George.
- Prince William and Kate Middleton "spent hours" looking into names with the help of a book.
- Prince George's full name has a very specific royal meaning.
Welp, turns out Prince George almost wasn't named Prince George.
As a reminder, Kate Middleton and Prince William's eldest child's full name is, ahem, George Alexander Louis. But apparently Kate wanted to go with something totally different.
According to royal editor Russell Myers in William and Catherine, The Monarchy's New Era: The Inside Story (per People), Will and Kate "spent hours" researching names, and Kate initially wanted Alexander or Alexandra.
"Catherine had her heart set on Alexander for a boy or Alexandra (also Queen Elizabeth's middle name) for a girl. William had privately voiced his preference for having a girl, and was keen to incorporate a tribute to his late mother, most likely in the form of a middle name," Myers explains. "The couple had been given a book of baby names by a close friend, which they spent hours thumbing through — they often ended up in fits of laughter after one or the other had presented a more left-field suggestion."
When George was born, People reported that his first name was a tribute to Queen Elizabeth's father, George VI. Meanwhile, Alexander is a shoutout to the Queen herself (her middle name was Alexandra). As for Louis, it was considered a tribute to the Queen's husband Prince Philip (whose grandfather was named Prince Louis) and Earl Louis Mountbatten.
At the time of Prince George's birth, royal biographer Christopher Warwick told E! News "With George we have a traditional, classic name with historical connotations. It might not be too imaginative, but it isn't too surprising. In a royal context it is a very appropriate and significant name because it means that maybe one day in the dim and distant future this child would become George VII."
