My husband, Paul, and I have been binge-watching the second season of “The Crown.” We love it, but it has sent my mind reeling. it’s impossible for me to ignore the fact that I am Elizabeth and my younger sister is Margaret Rose. We are four years apart. Just like the Windsor princesses.
How weird is that?
I don’t think I thought much about this “coincidence” until the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer in 1981. With all the royal news at that time, I realized that, somehow, Maggie and I had names that reflected those of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. I am Elizabeth Ann—the queen is Elizabeth Alexandra. But Princess Margaret Rose and my sister share the exact same name.
I said to my mother, at the time, “Our names seem to be too much of a coincidence.” She said, “Oh, your father just liked the name Elizabeth. Margaret was supposed to be named Victoria after your grandfather (Victor), but then we changed our minds.” Rose was my maternal grandmother’s name, so that was a logical middle name. But Margaret?
By watching this series, I now know that Princess Margaret Rose was married to Anthony Armstrong-Jones on May 6, 1960. This was 18 days before my Margaret Rose was born.
I’m sure the wedding was big news here in the U.S. at the time. And the princess was usually referred to to as Margaret Rose.
Hmmm. Is it possible my staunchly Democratic parents named us after British royals? It is hard to believe, but fun to think about!
My parents have passed, so I’ll never know the truth. I don’t see, in reviewing my cousins’ names, that any of our parents felt strongly about naming us after our forebears. The exception would be boys named after their fathers. All of my mother’s siblings who had sons had a “junior,” as did my father’s sister’s son. Other than that, the parents tended to toward popular names of the time. Elizabeth certainly was popular, and Margaret just a little less so.
I have mentioned before that my maternal grandparents were Portuguese immigrants. As such, they gave their daughters traditional names: Maria Estella, Belmira, Leotine, Jacinthe and Georgiana. They all Americanized their names as teenagers: Stella, Mabel, Lottie, Bessie (I think she was Jessie for a while) and, in my mother’s case, Jeannette. In her later years, my mother decided she wanted to be called Georgiana (Georgie for short) again. She worked in retail and that was the name that went on her badge. My cousins had a hard time adapting to this switch, however, and kept calling her Aunt Jeannette.
Knowing this story, I was glad my parents had given me a name I had no urge to change. I liked it because it wasn’t odd, and yet wasn’t so common that there were three Elizabeths in all my classes.
At home, my parents called me something like Lizabet. In elementary school, much to my chagrin, I was known as Betty. Ugh. As soon as I got to junior high I started writing “Liz” on my papers. It was a fresh start.
I wrote an essay in high school titled “Why I Hate to Be Called Betty.” The teacher gave me an A and noted, “How would you like to be called Florence?”
Even as a child I was aware that I shared my name with the Queen of England (later I would realize she was the second), and that fact pleased me. Elizabeth Taylor (another Liz) was a huge star. Finally, I thought Elizabeth was a good name because it could be abbreviated in so many ways: Liz, Lizzie, Betty (although I continued to wonder why), Libby, Betsy. I never thought to call myself Betsy, however, because I had a doll called Betsy-Wetsy. I did not want to invite any comparisons to a doll that urinated.
We called my sister Midget, and then Margie. There was a TV show back then called “My Little Margie,” which indicates to me that my parents might indeed have been vulnerable to all the news about Princess Margaret Rose. Margie is not a typical diminutive for Margaret—but there it was on TV! Margaret used “Meg” briefly in high school but has stuck with “Maggie” ever since.
When I told a colleague, who also was watching “The Crown,” about our names, he said, “And are your personalities similar?”
Well, I was the typical older sister who wanted to do everything right. I was a bit of a goody-two-shoes. I was shy and obedient at school and never got in trouble.
Our Margaret Rose, like the royal one, could be sassy. In elementary school, she sometimes was marked up for deportment.
Of course, we did not grow up with any sort of privilege. Ours was not a castle but a ranch house, and there was only one of them. Still, we had loving parents and a safe environment to grow up in, and that’s what really counts.
And it’s fun to think that, in our parents’ eyes, at least, we were genuine little princesses.
No comments:
Post a Comment