Whenever I hear about members of the royal family, they are always referred to by their title and their first name.
Do they have a last name?
The queen is Windsor, her husband is Mountbatten. Like everything else about them, they disdain to conform to societys rules, so their children go by her name, not his.
Bring on the Republic!
Are they related to the King George who was in power way back during the American Revolution?
Cecil covered this. Elizabeth II’s family name is Windsor, but she has decreed that her decendants will use the name Mountbatten-Windsor.
The column Cecil wrote starts with Prince Andrew’s military appellation, but it gets into the whole dynasty fairly quickly.
What did Prince Andrew’s superiors in the Royal Navy call him?
Prince William and Prince Henry (Harry) were/are addressed at school as “Windsor” by their instructors in class.
I should add that as the executive of a film production company, Queen Elizabeth’s youngest son goes by the name Edward Windsor.
But is Winsor actually considered their last name (other than Edward)? I know that they are of the House of Winsor. Is that different?
The relation to George III is as follows: Queen Victoria was the granddaughter of George III. Queen Victoria was Elizabeth II great-great grandmother. So George III was Elizabeth II’s great-great-great-great grandfather.
I have read that Diana, Princess of Wales, was a descendant of Kings and Queens other than just those that Charles, Prince of Wales is related to. She fills in the “gaps.” Prince William is a descendant of all of the kings and queens of England. Just please don’t ask me for a cite! I think that I read this about twenty years ago.
The English royal family’s surname used to be the rather non-english sounding “Saxe-Coburg-Gotha”. They decided to change it when we went to war with German in 1914… can’t imagine why!
From this site:
Echoes of Blackadder…?
bowes-lyon
sometimes known as mum
There’s no such thing. How can we expect foreigners to get this right if we get it wrong ourselves?
+1
guess england rules ok?
Yes, Windsor is considered their last name for all purposes where their last name is used at all.
Here’s Merriam-Webster on “house”:
Main Entry: house
Pronunciation: 'haus
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural hous·es /'hau-z&z also -s&z/
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English hous, from Old English hus; akin to Old High German hus house
Date: before 12th century
4 a : HOUSEHOLD b : a family including ancestors, descendants, and kindred <the house of Tudor>
So you could use “house” for your own family line if you were pretentious enough. My own desk dictionary (Collins) says “(often cap.) a family line including ancestors and relatives, esp. a noble one”.
From this site:
Not sure how reliable that site is, but I know there are Scottish families who still claim the “scottish crown”. I assume the implication of this passage is that while Queen Elizabth II might be a de facto ‘British’ monarch, I would imagine that there are many people who see her as an English monarch who also happens to hold the Scottish crown?
Some of the descendants of the younger children of King George V are now sufficiently far removed from the immediate royal family to have no peerages of their own, and they do in fact go by the family name of Windsor. Lord Frederick Windsor, for instance, is a great-grandson of King George V.
As already pointed out, the descendants of the present Queen whose surname is not “concealed” by a peerage or title of some kind will go by the name of Mountbatten-Windsor.
battenburg
going back a stage further? any help:cool:
As a further point of interest, “Mountbatten” is the anglicised (sorry, ‘britishised’ ;)) version of “Battenburg”, which is what some of Queen Victoria’s descendents were called until they too decided that a war with Germany made changing their name a prudent move.
http://www.quarterman.org/chart/henryviii/mid/mountbatten.html
e-logic
Maybe “no such thing” was putting it too strongly (technically the Queen is monarch of England, Scotland, Canada, Australia etc. after all). But we get plenty of threads asking what the difference is between England, Great Britain and the UK, and my concern was that saying she’s the queen of England wrongly implied that England = UK. No offence intended.
As far as the reliability of the linked website is concerned, you’d think they could tell the difference between V1 (flying bomb used by the Nazis) and VI (Roman numeral for 6), but the Official Monarchy site says the same thing without stirring up any nationalistic, flag-waving stuff.
One of my housemates is Scottish, and he has a go at me when I use British as he says he has no wish to be included with the English. Guess I can’t win either way! 
But yes, it was lazy of me to use English instead of British and that doesn’t help the ol’ fight against ignorance - my bad
Perhaps not the most balanced site I could have chosen! I particularly like the “give William Wallace a sainthood” campaign 
While we’re on the subject:
(1) I understand that the monarchy as it is now is mainly a ceremonial thing. What powers, if any, does the Queen actually have?
(2) When and how did the monarchy lose governmental power?
if we saw their driver’s licenses, that would answer a lot of questions.