Prince Daniel's name

1. In yesterday's blog article about the royal wedding in Stockholm last weekend, section 2, I commented on the fact that the Swedish Royal Court at the official website in connection with the updating of the Royal Family section to include the biography of Prince Daniel had switched his given names (Daniel Olof instead of Olof Daniel). A minor mistake, but still worth pointing out. The mistake was fortunately corrected today.

In my blog article yesterday I also asked what was going to happen with Prince Daniel's surname, as a legal expert at the Swedish Tax Agency had made clear that according to the Swedish name law there was no possibility to legally "take away" one's surname. The King's lawyer, Axel Calissendorff, had stressed, however, that the royal family had no surname (by customary law, I presume).

The question about the then Daniel Westling's surname was described as "mycket känslig" ("very sensitive"). No conclusion about the surname had been reached when Metro published its article in March 2010.

Today it seems that Prince Daniel will not only keep his legal surname, but that he has also got a new one, Bernadotte. Yesterday he was in the biography presented as "Daniel Olof (sic!), Prins av Sverige, Hertig av Västergötland" (unfortunately I didn't take a screen picture yesterday, but also others had witnessed the wrong name order). According to the biography (see screen capture above), Prince Daniel is now listed as "Olof Daniel Westling Bernadotte, Prins av Sverige, Hertig av Västergötland". For all practical purposes he will of course only be referred to as "Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland", but it is interesting to note that Prince Daniel is the only member of the royal house who has a legal surname. I am quite certain that today's update by the royal court was made with reference to the earlier debate. Still I wonder what happened in 1976 when Silvia Sommerlath became Queen of Sweden. Was the name law at the time different than the current one, or did no-one bother to question the legality of dropping Silvia's surname?

I wouldn't mind if the royal court made one step further and registered Bernadotte as a surname for all the members of the royal house, as the name law then would apply to every Swedish citizen, whether royal or not, but the need of a surname is probably not a pressing matter...

By the way, in the English version of Prince Daniel's biography, he is today presented as Olof Daniel, Prince of Sweden in the first entry, but if you click on the biography link, his full name appears.

2. Over to another, not related subject: It didn't take long for the Swedish tabloids to figure out where Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel had gone on their honeymoon. I am not going to write an independent blog article about this (and I won't bother to give links either), but I would like to add how sad I think it is that the couple couldn't be left alone for a few weeks. They certainly deserve some time out of the limelight. I really wonder what is going on in the mind of these people who feel the need to call the media whenever a celebrity (or a royal, as in this instance) turns up somewhere. Some people are obviously more greedy than others...