# How Do I Get a Royal Title? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 10, 2011, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-get-a-royal-title/581451 "2011-05-10T23:58:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-get-a-royal-title/581451/21 "2011-05-11T12:10:11Z")
Besides which, the title of “Count” doesn’t exist in the UK. British counts are earls. Their wives are still countesses, though. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-get-a-royal-title/581451/22 "2011-05-11T12:48:16Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > Or your parents could actually, legally give you a first name of Prince, and put it on your birth certificate. > > (Of course, then when you grow up, you might decide to change that to an unpronounceable symbol for a name.) Charles has decided his royal name will be “The Monarch Formerly Known As Prince Of Wales.” ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-get-a-royal-title/581451/23 "2011-05-11T12:49:20Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > In England, the reigning Monarch grants you the title. They don’t do it often as new titles outside the royal family (although knights and dames are made all the time). i.e. commoners don’t get raised to the peerage often. On the contrary, it happens all the time. About 100 commoners were granted peerages within the last year - political, “life peers”, that is members of the so-called upper house of Parliament, the House of Lords. These people are now Barons or Baronesses, although the men are more often known as “Lord Smith” or whatever. I guess you mean hereditary peers, though. New hereditary peerages are indeed very rarely created these days except, as you say, within the royal family (at least I presume the recent Dukedom of Cambridge is hereditary?) ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-get-a-royal-title/581451/24 "2011-05-11T12:59:03Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > Besides which, the title of “Count” doesn’t exist in the UK. British counts are earls. Their wives are still countesses, though. TRue in essence, not in nitpicky detail. If you are a male Level 3 Peer in the England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, or U.K. peerage systems, and there are still title-holders in all five systems, you are an Earl, not a Count, to be sure. But the term “Count” is recognized with regard to people with Continental Level 3 titles, including a few British citizens who inherited a title from somewhere on the Continent. There were also between 1066 and 1216 a few men who were named (or inherited from an ancestor who was named) Earls of English shires who were also Counts of Norman countships, and two men who were shirttail relations of the Royal Family who were Counts of the Holy Roiman Empire and refugees from Napoleon, whom the Prince Regent formally recognized as Counts in the British peerage. They both died off within a decade or two, though. ---
**Author:** ![Trom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@Trom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trom)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-get-a-royal-title/581451/25 "2011-05-11T15:59:11Z")
You can [become](http://www.sealandgov.org/shop.html#Titles)a Lord, Lady, Baron, or Baroness in the [Principality of Sealand](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand) for a fee. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-get-a-royal-title/581451/26 "2011-05-11T19:34:46Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > …I guess you mean hereditary peers, though. New hereditary peerages are indeed very rarely created these days except, as you say, within the royal family (at least I presume the recent Dukedom of Cambridge is hereditary?) IIRC Margaret Thatcher’s husband was the last person outside the royal family to be given a hereditary title, and that was only a baronetcy (hereditary knighthood) not a peerage. Thatcher herself was made a life peeress when she retired from the House of Commons. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-get-a-royal-title/581451.md?page=1)