_. Royal watchers are on tip toe with excitement over the choice of names that Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank has selected for their infant son. I have delved into the branches of Jack's family tree to find some clues.
The baby is the first child for the princess, 30, and husband Jack Brooksbank, 34, and a first grandchild for the Duke of York and for Sarah Duchess of York. The infant is the ninth great-grandchild of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh.
Master Brooksbank [he has no courtesy title] who weighed in at 8lb 1oz, was born at 8:55am, 9 February, 2021, London's Portland Hospital, where Eugenie was born in 1990, and where Archie Mountbatten-Windsor was born in 2019.
The baby is eleventh in line of succession to the throne, following his mother, who is in tenth place, and displacing the Earl of Wessex, who drops to 12th position.
Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank married at St George's Chapel, Windsor, 12 October, 2018.
The most recent birth in the Brooksbank family was last summer, when Amy Brooksbank, wife of Jack's younger brother, Thomas George, gave birth to a son, named Wilfred Stamp Ewing Brooksbank.
The family do tend to go for family surnames as christian names, and it's a tradition going back generations.
One of Jack's middle names is Stamp. His late grandfather, Stamp Godfrey Brooksbank, who died four years ago was named Stamp in honour of an ancestor of that surname. Interestingly, Stamp Brooksbank was the son of an Edward York Brooksbank, a North Yorkshire landowner, who died as the result of a car accident in 1935. Edward York Brooksbank was named after his grandmother, Lucy Mary York, a member of a landed gentry family, seated at Wighill Park, North Yorkshire.
If Eugenie and Jack were to give their son the middle of name of York it would be a nod to both sides of the family. Eugenie, born Princess Eugenie of York, and her elder sister Beatrice cannot succeed to the title Duke of York as it can only descend to heirs male. The use of the name York would keep the name alive.
The trend for including what is usually a surname as a christian name is not common in the royal family. Prince Michael of Kent, born in 1942, has the name Franklin in honour of the wartime US president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and of course the Duke and Duchess of Sussex gave Archie the middle name of Harrison, at his birth in 2019. It is not known why Harry and Meghan selected Harrison.
Jack Christopher Stamp Brooksbank (born 3 May, 1986), scion of the Brooksbank baronets, is the elder son of Mr George Edward Hugh Brooksbank (b 8 Feb 1949), by his wife the former Nicola J Newton (b 1953).
HRH Princess Eugenie Victoria Helena of York (b 23 Mar, 1990), is the younger daughter of HRH The Duke of York, KG (born 19 Feb, 1960), by his former wife the former Sarah Margaret Ferguson [born 15 Oct, 1959], scion of the Fergusons of Dummer.
Jack's great-grandfather Major the Hon Sir John Spencer Coke [1880-1957]. I do not think for one minute that we are about to see a Spencer Brooksbank. That would be a slight to cousins William and Harry.
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