On Tue, 18 Apr 2006, Carl Remick wrote:
> The British royal family who came from the Houses of Hanover and
> Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and at the time of WWI were rechristened "Windsors"
> while their close relatives the Battenburgs became the Mountbattens.
There's a very funny passage in Anita Loos's novel _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_ (which was written in the 20s when these makeovers were fresh) about how one of her sugar daddies now goes by the name of Mountginz, because he thinks it's much more distinguished, and it means the same thing, and anyway Mountbatten did it.
Michael