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Wales Online
Sport
Tom Coleman

Prince William's secret about Prince George's name 'he'd never tell Kate'

Prince William is perhaps the most high-profile fan of the Welsh rugby team.

Often with his red shirt on, the Duke of Cambridge is a regular at matches and is patron of the Welsh Rugby Union.

Now fresh details have emerged about how it was his love for Welsh rugby which helped provided some inspiration when choosing a name for this first-born son, George.

The young prince - now aged eight - was born back in July 2013, a few months after Wales smashed England 30-3 on their way to claiming the Six Nations championship title. Then came the British and Irish Lions' triumph Down Under against the Wallabies that summer, just before Prince George's arrival to Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge.

Speaking on the BBC's Rugby Union Daily podcast, former Wales captain Sam Warburton said William was a regular visitor to the Welsh dressing room after games while one particular encounter sticks in his mind.

"Prince William was a visitor with Wales," Warburton said. "The boys would just be chatting to him in their towels, and he didn't care.

"I think he quite liked the normality of it. People not [just going] 'yes sir, no sir', it was just talking rugby, talking about his kids.

"I remember he came into the dressing room and our team manager said 'Sam, William's coming in after the game, we've got a shirt to present to him'.

"He'd just has his baby boy George, which was his first, so it had 'George' and a little No. 7 on the back because I was playing and captain. I didn't ask for No. 7! And he came in and we gave him the shirt, and he seemed to really like it."

While George is a name which already has strong associations with the royal family, Warburton revealed how the future king let slip that his son had, at least in part, been named after one of his most favourite players.

"Then he was chatting to George North and he said 'I could never say this in public and I would never tell Kate this, but one of the reasons I like 'George' is because you're one of my favourite players.

"I was thinking 'that's a heck of a thing to tell George'.

"He'll be about 80, 90 years of age, 60 or whatever, and he's going to tell his grandkids 'oh you know the king of England there, King William? Prince George is named after me'.

"Then they'll be like 'whatever granddad, take him to bed'.

"He'd always come in so he would have been our best changing room guest."

One can only wonder if North's sensational try for the Lions out in Australia, which happened around a month before the young prince's birth, might well have sealed the deal.

The young prince's full name is George Alexander Louis, but he is known as George Cambridge at school. It is likely the name George was given in homage to Prince William’s great-grandfather King George VI - the Queen's father, known as Albert of Bertie.

The name Alexander may have been a tribute to the Queen, whose middle name is Alexandra, while Louis is one of Prince William's middle names, with his full name being William Arthur Philip Louis. It could also have been a nod to Louis Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh's uncle.

Prince William and Kate Middleton have, of course, gone on to have two more children: six-year-old Princess Charlotte - full name Charlotte Elizabeth Diana - and three-year-old Prince Louis - full name Louis Arthur Charles.

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