Edward and Sophie name baby

The Earl and Countess of Wessex have named their daughter Louise Alice Elizabeth Mary Mountbatten-Windsor, Buckingham Palace announced today.

The latest addition to the Royal Family, born less than three weeks ago, will be known as Lady Louise Windsor, said a Palace spokeswoman.

Edward and Sophie, the Earl and Countess, have decided, with the Queen's consent, not to style their daughter "Her Royal Highness".

Instead, she will use the title of a daughter of an earl.

Although her full surname is Mountbatten-Windsor, she will only use Windsor.

The royal couple decided on Louise as their favoured name after Edward's great-grandmother and Queen Victoria's daughter.

Alice is the name of the Earl's paternal grandmother, the Duke of Edinburgh' s mother Princess Alice, of Greece.

Elizabeth was chosen in memory of his maternal grandmother, the Queen Mother.
Mary ishe Countess's mother's name.

It is not known whether the baby's birth and names have yet been formally registered.

However, the choice of Mountbatten-Windsor will please the Earl's father, Philip, whose surname it was before he married into the Royal Family.

Previous attempts by the Duke, encouraged by his uncle Lord Mountbatten of Burma, to use the name failed.

Philip wanted his first son Charles, now the Prince of Wales, to be called Mountbatten and, when this was rejected, is said to have exclaimed: "That makes me a bloody amoeba."

The new royal baby was born after the Countess was rushed to Frimley Park Hospital, near her Bagshot home in Surrey, and underwent an emergency Caesarean section.

The baby, due at the beginning of December, was born several weeks premature and was transferred to a specialist neo-natal unit at St George's Hospital, Tooting, south London.

She was later reunited with her mother at Frimley Park, an NHS hospital, and was allowed home on Sunday.