Naming future queens

According to the poll results so far, picking a name for a future Queen of England is harder than choosing for a king.  For the boys, bookies' favourite George is taking an early lead but all the ballots so far for a girl's name are for something other than the favourites, Elizabeth and Diana.  So I've started a message board for more discussion on which names the Cambridges might go for if they have a little princess. 

Looking back, other Queen Consorts of England haven't had the same dilemma as future queen Kate.  After all, she's the first woman in British royal history to know that a daughter will definitely inherit the throne so choosing a name for a little girl has perhaps more weight than ever before.

Past queens of England named girls knowing they probably wouldn't be queen.  And there were protocols - set by the royal family they had married into.  It usually meant selecting an already royal name.  All our past queens, except two, had daughters named after their mothers in law.  Only Eleanor of Provence and Caroline of Ansbach bucked that trend.

Eleanor had three daughters but none of them bore the name of the mother of her husband, Henry III.  Instead she named one girl after her own mother - Beatrice - and picked different names for the other two.  The royal couple ended up with a Margaret and a Katherine, the first time either name had been used for an English royal baby. 

Caroline had five daughters but she and her husband, the future George II, didn't name any of them after his mother.  Sophia Dorothea of Celle is a strange figure in British royal history.  She married the man who would become George I in 1682, had two children with him and then found herself displaced by mistresses.  Her own close friendship with a man called Philip Christoph von Konigsmarck led to her husband accusing her of adultery and imprisoning her in a tower for the last 33 years of her life.  As Caroline and George were forming their family while the old king, George I, was still alive it's perhaps not surprising that they chose not to name a baby after Sophia Dorothea. 

Once the mothers in law were honoured, past queens very often used the names of other family relatives for their girls meaning that once a name joined the royal merry go round it took a long time for it to fall off again.  Hence the first three queens of England having Matildas while five of the seven Plantagenet queens who had daughters called one of them Eleanor.  In fact, one of the queens - Marguerite of France - used it even though it had been the name of her husband's beloved first wife, a move that made her even more popular than before.

So perhaps a quick scan of the close family will provide the name - but that brings us back to Diana and Elizabeth and thoughts seem to be turning elsewhere.

Here's the link for the board - it will be interesting to see what takes the lead!

Queens of England group

PS I did wonder whether the Cambridges might go for Eleanor but the future Queen of Spain is Leonor....what about two monarchs in Europe with the same name?