The Supreme Tradition of Spelling Bees

The royal engagement was in the Romanian press a couple of weeks ago while the UK press observed some sort of embargo. Thank God for the internet!

There have been some suggestions that the royal wedding should form part of the Olympic opening ceremony in 2012 as the only way we could compete with the Chinese for opennig glitz.
http://www.hecklerspray.com/london-olympic-opening-cermony-to-feature-prince-williams-wedding

A wedding delay until 2012 is unlikely to cuase a dangerous level of pent-up sexual frustration in the happy couple. As Prince Charles noted (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11765422) "They have been practising long enough".

The IHT story is totally believable. A special advisor to the last government famously let slip on 9/11 that this was " a good day to bury bad news". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Moore

I realized last night that I was wrong about Mountbatten/Battenberg. Prince Philip's mother was a Battenberg, not his father. William's father's father's father was of the German-Danish-Greek House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.

I'm going to give up now (as you all will be relieved to hear), because I don't know why Victoria's descendants took their dynastic name from Prince Albert (Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, changed to Windsor), abandoning Hanover, while her present majesty's descendants seem to think of themselves still as of the House of Windsor and rather than of the house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.

I guess he can call himself whatever he wants, but that aside. "William Wales" still seems dead wrong to me.

BJD, I haven't started looking yet. I went to Texas for a week right after I left the company, and now I'm sleeping in and going slow for the time being. Things were quite hectic in my final 2 years so I am taking a break right now. I do have a serviceable resumé, have filed for unemployment compensation, and have a 2 to 3 hour a week volunteer gig going. My severance pay runs for about 6 months, then I will be eligible for unemployment compensation if I still don't have a job at that point.

The Royal Family Name according to the Royals. (I snipped out a lot)

Before 1917, members of the British Royal Family had no surname, but only the name of the house or dynasty to which they belonged.

In 1917, there was a radical change, when George V specifically adopted Windsor, not only as the name of the 'House' or dynasty, but also as the surname of his family. The family name was changed as a result of anti-German feeling during the First World War, and the name Windsor was adopted after the Castle of the same name.

... in 1960, The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh decided that they would like their own direct descendants to be distinguished from the rest of the Royal Family (without changing the name of the Royal House), as Windsor is the surname used by all the male and unmarried female descendants of George V.

It was therefore declared in the Privy Council that The Queen's descendants, other than those with the style of Royal Highness and the title of Prince/Princess, or female descendants who marry, would carry the name of Mountbatten-Windsor.

This reflected Prince Philip's surname. In 1947, when Prince Philip of Greece became naturalised, he assumed the name of Philip Mountbatten as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy.

The effect of the declaration was that all The Queen's children, on occasions when they needed a surname, would have the surname Mountbatten-Windsor.

AND
>Prince William's full title is His Royal Highness Prince William of Wales KG. [The Queen made him a Knight of the Garter in 2008]

In his military life, Prince William is known as Flight Lieutenant William Wales.

Edited to add: HIs father is
His Royal Highness Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO, PC, ADC, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland.

Edited by: The Rt. Hon. Christopher Geidt CVO OBE, Private Secretary to the Sovereign

That more or less makes sense, aside from the contradiction here:

The effect of the declaration was that all The Queen's children, on occasions when they needed a surname, would have the surname Mountbatten-Windsor.

In his military life, Prince William is known as Flight Lieutenant William Wales.

If Charles's surname is Mountbatten-Windsor, why isn't that William's surname?

I posted info on "Wales" to your specific thread.

Language news from Dushanbe.

Thanks for the update, Vinny. I recently heard from a former classmate I hadn't spoken to since the Carter administration. He is now a speaker of Turkish and Persian among other languages, and I had the pleasure of updating myself and then him on the current standing (official and otherwise) of the region's alphabets.

Another thanks to Vinny -interesting link.
In 6 months I'll be in Kyrgyzstan / Kashgaria so I'll report back on what aphabets I find.

Interesting, Vinny. My first thoughts before reading the readers' comments were indeed that many of the Central Asian & Caucasian) groupss incorporated into Russia and then the USSR would have had very high illiteracy rates, so the Cyrillic alphabet would have been one way of asserting Russian and then Soviet control.

I guess what alphabets are accepted -- Turkish, Persian or Latin, or retaining Cyrillic -- will be highly politicized anyway. And I'm not in the least surprised that the Russians see it as an attack-- they are extremely sensitive to any loss of power and influence.