So they have named the latest member of the British Royal family Louis, have they? A good French name. After all, the French royal family, when they had one, had an awful lot of ‘Louis’s. However do you write the plural of names like Louis that end already in ‘s’?

Which brings me to pronunciation. One of the ladies I Iunched with on Friday regaled us with the tale of something she overheard in the post office. It went like this:-

1st speaker: They’ve named the new prince Louis. (pronounced like the Isle of Lewis)

2nd speaker: I think it’s Louis. (pronounced Looie x to rhyme with screwy).

1st speaker: No, you’re wrong. It’s Louis (pronounced Lewis).

2nd speaker: How do you work that out?

1st speaker: Easy. It ends with an “s”.

Enough said!

We all agreed that it is hard to resist the urge to correct odd things you overhear in the post office. 

Goodness knows how that 1st speaker deals with names like Sean, Sinead, and above all Niamh!!

As regards the NAME, the child is Louis Arthur Charles. Now, his big brother in George Alexander Louis. Is it usual to give more than one child in a family the same name? I’m glad I was not made to share names with my siblings. But then the royal family seem to have a small number of names they share around:-

Charles is Charles Philip Arthur George.

William is William Arthur Philip Louis

Prince Harry is Henry Charles Albert David

It seems to me that there must be a lot of elderly relatives who would be offended if their name was not given to a royal offspring!

And John Crace, writing in yesterday’s Guardian wrote about friends of his who held off naming their newborn until the royal newborn was named. They didn’t want anyone to think they named their child after the little royal baby.

And now, here is someone advocating that little Louis should be the first royal child to be sent to a comprehensive s would make him truly a “people’s prince”. An interesting notion. Tony Blair did it, I seem to remember, selecting a “good” comprehensive for one or more of his offspring. Did that make the little Blair a true “people’s politician’s offspring”? Maybe it would make politicians look again at funding for state schools, other than academies that is.

It might be a little early in royal evolution for such a move though. After all Charles was the first one to be sent to school. Before him they were home-schooled.