Why Are They Called the House of Windsor? The Name Change Explained

On 17 July 1917, King George V sat down and signed away his family’s German name. A single proclamation in the London Gazette turned the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha into the House of Windsor, and the change has held for well over a century. The house of windsor name was not chosen for its poetry. It was chosen because Windsor Castle was the one thing about the family that sounded unmistakably English.

The timing tells you everything. Britain was three years into the First World War, German airships were bombing London, and a king with German cousins on the throne of the enemy was suddenly a public relations problem he could not ignore.

Here is what actually happened, and why the name has stuck through four monarchs since.

The name before Windsor: Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Queen Victoria’s descendants carried the surname of her husband, Prince Albert, who belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a small German duchy in what is now Bavaria and Thuringia. When Victoria’s son became Edward VII in 1901, the royal house officially took his father’s name, making Saxe-Coburg and Gotha the formal dynastic title of the British monarchy for the first time.

It was a mouthful even by royal standards, and for most of Victoria’s long reign nobody minded much. Royal intermarriage across Europe was simply how monarchies did business, and the family had married into German houses for two centuries, including the Hanoverians before them.

That changed the moment Britain and Germany went to war in August 1914. George V, Victoria’s grandson, was reigning under a name shared with the enemy’s officer class, and his own first cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II, sat on the German throne. The family tree had not changed. The politics around it had changed completely.

Why 1917: anti-German feeling reaches the palace

By the summer of 1917, Britain had endured three years of casualties on the Western Front and, closer to home, the first sustained bombing campaign against London by German Gotha G.IV aircraft, the very machine that shared its name with the royal house. Newspapers and the public increasingly used “German” as an insult, shopkeepers with German surnames were attacked, and even dachshunds were reportedly kicked in the street.

H. G. Wells wrote that Britain’s monarchy was “alien and uninspiring”, and George V is said to have replied that he might be uninspiring but he would be damned if he was alien. The remark, whether exact or embellished by later biographers, captures the mood precisely. The king needed to prove, publicly and permanently, that the crown belonged to Britain.

A committee was formed to find a solution, and the king’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, is generally credited with proposing Windsor. It carried none of the awkward German syllables, and it pointed straight at the castle that had housed English and British monarchs for over 900 years, since William the Conqueror began building there in the 1070s.

The 17 July 1917 proclamation

The change became official with a royal proclamation published in the London Gazette on 17 July 1917. From that date, George V declared, his House and Family would be known as the House of Windsor, and all descendants of Queen Victoria in the male line who were British subjects would drop their German names and titles in favour of British ones.

The proclamation was deliberately sweeping. It did not simply rename the king. It stripped every relevant relative of German titles such as Serene Highness, Grand Duke and Prince of that or another small state, replacing them with English peerages instead. Overnight, on paper at least, an entire branch of European aristocracy became British.

The public reaction was largely approving, and even affectionate mockery followed quickly, with the satirical magazine Punch joking that the Kaiser would soon rename his own house after Buckingham Palace in retaliation. He never did. The House of Windsor has kept its name through the reigns of George V, Edward VIII, George VI, Elizabeth II and now Charles III.

Battenberg becomes Mountbatten

George V’s proclamation did not stop with his immediate family. Just three days earlier, on 14 July 1917, his Battenberg relatives had already anglicised their own surname to Mountbatten, a direct translation of the German “Battenberg” into English.

Prince Louis of Battenberg, a distinguished naval officer and the grandfather of the future Prince Philip, gave up his German titles and style of Serene Highness and was created Marquess of Milford Haven instead. He had reportedly considered the name “Battenhill” before settling on Mountbatten. The same wave of changes reached the Teck family, Queen Mary’s relatives, who became the Marquesses of Cambridge, and the Schleswig-Holstein and Gleichen families made similar switches.

This detail matters because it explains a name many people still find confusing decades later: Mountbatten-Windsor. When Prince Philip, born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, took the Mountbatten surname on becoming a naturalised British subject before his 1947 marriage to the future Elizabeth II, he brought that 1917 rebrand directly into the next generation of the royal family.

Dynastic house versus personal surname

One detail trips people up constantly: Windsor is a house name, not a surname in the ordinary sense, and the two things do different jobs. A royal house is the dynasty itself, the answer to “which family sits on the throne”. A surname is what you write on a passport application or a school register.

For most of history, senior royals did not need a surname at all because they were known by title alone, such as “Princess Elizabeth” or “Prince Andrew”. The house name Windsor covered the dynasty, and no personal surname was required underneath it. That started to shift under Elizabeth II, partly because Prince Philip wanted his own children to carry a family name he had a hand in choosing, and partly because modern life, from school forms to marriage certificates, occasionally demands one. The House of Windsor still names the dynasty; Mountbatten-Windsor is simply the surname some descendants use when a surname is actually required.

Elizabeth II’s 1952 and 1960 declarations

When Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952, one of her first pieces of unfinished business was confirming that her own house and family would remain Windsor, rather than switching, as tradition might have suggested, to her husband’s name. On 9 April 1952, she declared in Council that she and her children would be known as the House and Family of Windsor. Prince Philip is said to have been unhappy about the decision, reportedly complaining that he was the only man in the country not permitted to give his own name to his children.

The matter was only partly resolved eight years later. On 8 February 1960, the Queen issued a further declaration in Council stating that descendants who did not carry the style of Royal Highness or the title of Prince or Princess would bear the surname Mountbatten-Windsor, combining her house name with her husband’s adopted one. Descendants who do hold HRH and a princely title, such as the King’s own children were before his accession, still need no surname beyond the house name itself, though many have used one informally at school or in the armed forces regardless.

How Mountbatten-Windsor is used today

In practice, Mountbatten-Windsor appears on official documents such as marriage certificates rather than in everyday conversation. Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, registered their children Archie and Lilibet with Mountbatten-Windsor as a surname element, and Princess Anne’s grandchildren, who hold no royal titles, have used it too.

Working royals more often go by a territorial surname drawn from their title when one is needed day to day. Prince William’s three children have used Wales at school, following their father’s title as Prince of Wales, just as William and Harry used Wales in their own school years. None of this replaces the House of Windsor as the dynasty’s name; it simply reflects that a working family, however grand, occasionally needs to fill in a form like anyone else.

Why the Name Still Matters

More than a century on, the House of Windsor is no longer read as a wartime fix. It is simply what the monarchy is called, as familiar as Windsor Castle itself, and rather more permanent than the political panic that produced it. George V’s 1917 proclamation solved an urgent problem, but the choice has aged into something closer to a national institution’s actual identity.

It is also a reminder that royal history rewards a closer look. The line of succession, the family tree, and now the house name itself each turn out to have a specific date, a specific decision-maker and a good story behind them. Readers who enjoyed this are warmly pointed toward our wider Royal Figures pillar for more of the same.

Frequently asked questions

What was the royal family called before Windsor?

Before 1917, the royal house was formally called Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a name inherited from Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, and adopted officially when Edward VII became king in 1901.

Why did the royal family change its name to Windsor?

George V changed the family name in 1917 because of intense anti-German feeling during the First World War, when a monarchy with a German dynastic name and German royal relatives had become a political liability.

Under whose reign did the royal family change its name to Windsor?

The name changed under King George V, Queen Victoria’s grandson, who issued the proclamation on 17 July 1917, partway through his reign from 1910 to 1936.

Why was the name Windsor chosen specifically?

Windsor was chosen for its clear English identity and its direct link to Windsor Castle, which had been a residence of English and British monarchs for roughly 900 years by 1917.

What is the difference between the House of Windsor and Mountbatten-Windsor?

The House of Windsor is the name of the royal dynasty itself, while Mountbatten-Windsor is a personal surname used by some of Queen Elizabeth II’s descendants who do not hold the title of Prince or Princess with the style Royal Highness.

Did other royal relatives change their names in 1917 too?

Yes. The Battenberg family anglicised their name to Mountbatten on 14 July 1917, just before the main proclamation, and the Teck family became the Marquesses of Cambridge around the same time.

Is Mountbatten-Windsor used on official documents?

Yes, it appears on documents such as marriage certificates and birth registrations for descendants who need a surname, including Prince Harry and Meghan’s children, Archie and Lilibet.

Has the House of Windsor name ever been at risk of changing again?

No formal change has been proposed since 1917. Elizabeth II confirmed the house name would continue in 1952, and King Charles III’s reign continues under the same House of Windsor established over a century ago.

Historical details are drawn from royal and public record, including the 1917 London Gazette proclamation; see royal.uk for further reading.