A brand new royal baby and she's got a very medieval name

 

Monaco's royals have plenty to celebrate as they welcome a brand new member. Beatrice Borromeo and her husband, Pierre Casiraghi, have welcomed a little girl and they've chosen a name that royals in the Middle Ages used to love. Say hello to Bianca.

In full, the newest member of the Grimaldi dynasty is Bianca Carolina Marta Casiraghi. She's eleventh in line to the Monegasque throne and among her grandparents is the impossibly glamourous Princess Caroline, elder sister of Prince Albert II. Bianca gets one of her middle names from the glam gran and you don't get a prize for working out which one. Marta is in honour of Beatrice's grandmother, Marta. But Bianca is the name everyone's talking about.

It's rather unusual and rather elegant (except if you lived in the UK during the early 2000s when it was famously the name of one of the loudest and funniest characters EastEnders has ever produced) and it's also really rather medieval. European royal dynasties haven't given us such a high profile Bianca for a while but back in the day, it was one of THE names to give a regal baby.

Perhaps its most famous bearer is Bianca Maria Sforza who was Holy Roman Empress and Queen of Germany. Then there's Bianca Cappello who married into the Medici dynasty in the 16th century and ended up as Grand Duchess of Tuscany.  But it's in its French form that it really gets royal form.

Blanche was one of the go to royal names in some parts of Europe for several centuries. We have Blanche of Castile who became Queen of France and Blanche of France who became an Infanta of Castile which seems like a very neat swap indeed. Blanche of Navarre also became Queen of France as did Blanche of Burgundy. Unsurprisingly, a string of French princesses were also called Blanche. 

In Navarre, the name was often used as Blanca which underlines just how closely this 21st century royal baby name is related to the older versions. Bianca, Blanche and Blanca all mean ''white'' and as women married in between dynasties in centuries past, their name was used in many forms. Navarre had two queen regnants called Blanche or Blanca as well as a queen consort. In England, the French version was preferred and Henry IV's daughter was usually called Blanche, at least until her marriage to the heir of the Holy Roman Empire. Her wedding to Louis took her to Germany and continental versions of her name abounded.

In 2025, we don't usually translate a name to match the language we're speaking. Bianca's father is Pierre, never Pietro or Peter, while her brothers are Stefano and Francesco rather than Stephen and Francis.