King Me!

In history, baby names trends were often predicted by whatever the royalty went with. There was a time when most people were named the same few names, and the popularity of each was largely dependent on the persons in power. Elizabeth’s reign in England saw a plethora of tiny Elizabeths and Virginias. More recently, the birth of Prince William of England reintroduced the name William to the name charts. William had been discarded for a time as “old and ugly”. Now it is seen as classic and elegant.

When most Americans think of royal names, we tend to think of the royal house of Britain, and the names George and Henry figure largely. However, there have been a lot of more exotic names in the royal houses of history, and I offer here a selection of some of the most unusual ones. I was going to try to include queenly names, but since most queens were merely the wives of kings, most historical websites haven’t seen fit to include their names. It’s a shame, because I can bet that Ethelwolf’s wife had an interesting name herself.

This list is also very limited in terms of geography. The reason is that, although I also looked up kings of African countries and Asian countries and South American countries, the definition of king seems to differ from place to place, and, to add to that, there have been a lot of rulers around the world throughout history. In order to make things simple, I selected countries in which the definition of a monarch was familiar, and tried to select names one may not associate with those countries. Hence, this is a tremendously Western European-centric list, for which I make my apologies now.

England:
Alfred (849-901 CE) An ancient Germanic name meaning “elf-counsel”
Canute (994-1035 CE) ???
Ethelred (?-871 CE) An Aglo-Saxon name meaning “noble ruler”. Ethelred was known as Ethelred the Unready.
Stephen (1096-1154 CE) A French name meaning “crown” or “wreath”.

Scotland:
Aidanus (574 CE) Presumably the name Aidan with a Latin ending tacked on. Supposedly the father of Arthurius, who is believed (by some few) to be the legendary King Arthur. Does this make Aidanus Uther Pendragon?
Donald (1093-1094) This Gaelic name means “world ruler”.
Duncan (1034-1040) Yessir, this is the selfsame King Duncan deposed by Macbeth, of Shakespeare fame. The name Duncan means “brown soldier”.
Malcolm (1005-1034) This kingly name means “a devotee of St. Columba”.

France: (Yes, there were kings named something other than Louis)

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