The names of Princess Eugenie’s son

The name Stamp in the Brooksbank family has a long tradition. The name came into the family when Mary Stamp in 1679 married Joseph Brooksbank. They named their first son Stamp, and since there have regularly been boys called Stamp in the family. It is however not a name given to each boy in the family. The last one who actually used the name as his daily first name was the grandfather of Jack Brooksbank, who married Princess Eugenie of York. But the name is also part of the christening names of Jack himself, as well as of his little nephew born 2020.

Nearly everybody thought there would be a good chance that Eugenie and Jack would give Stamp as a middle name to their son, who was born on 9 February 2021 at the Portland Hospital in London. But no, they decided otherwise. The boy got some historical names after all: August Philip Hawke. Eugenie explained on her Instagram: “He is named after his great grandfather and both of his great x5 grandfathers.” That great grandfather is of course Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh. But where do the other two names appear?

Hawke is the easiest one:

August Philip Hawke Brooksbank (2021)
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Jack Christopher Stamp Brooksbank (1986)
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George Edward Hugh Brooksbank (1949)
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Stamp Godfrey Brooksbank (1922-2017)
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Edward York Brooksbank (1888-1935)
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Edward Clitherow Brooksbank, 1st baronet 1919 (1858-1943)
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Edward Brooksbank (1826-1916)
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Edward Hawke Brooksbank (1789-1883)

It is unclear where the name originally comes from. Funily enough little August is also the great-great-great-great-grandson of Countess Julia Hauke (1825-1895), who married Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine (1823-1888). They are the ancestors of the Mountbatten/Battenberg family. The name Hauke is of Frisian origin and is a reduced form of Germanic names starting with “Habuk-” (hawk) (Source: Rienk de Haan: Fryske Foarnammen, Leeuwarden 2002).

The name August isn’t as obvious as it sounds. The name Augustus/Augusta appears quite regularly in the Hannover family tree, until the 19th century. But none is the 5x grandfather of the newborn August, unless Eugenie and Jack counted wrong of course (see here for the ancestors of Eugenies father), unless it is a name from the ancestry of Eugenies mother (but I don’t think so at first glance). The last time the name Augustus featured in the British royal family was in 2009, when the son of Lord and Lady Nicholas Windsor was named Leopold Ernest Augustus Guelph.

August Philip Hawke Brooksbank (2021)
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Princess Eugenie of York (1990)
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Prince Andrew, The Duke of York (1960)
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Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom (1926) & Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark (1921)
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King George VI of the United Kingdom (1895-1952)
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King George V of the United Kingdom (1865-1936)
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King Edward VII of the United Kingdom (1841-1910)
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Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (1819-1901) and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819-1861), whose full birth names were Franz Albrecht August Karl Emanuel.
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Prince Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent (1767-1820)

Eurohistory however thinks August comes from August Ludwig Baron von Senarclens de Grancy (1794-1871), who is supposedly the biological father of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine (1823-1888), whose mother was married to Grand Duke Ludwig II of Hesse and by Rhine. To me however it sounds a bit far fetched, given the fact that it has never been proven and he is at least not officially an ancestor of Eugenie.