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LONDON — When it comes to Prince William and his wife Kate’s new baby boy, choosing just one name won’t do. You need about three or four.

Just ask the father, William Arthur Philip Louis. Or the grandfather, Charles Philip Arthur George. Or the great-grandmother, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary.

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“I think because the child is going to be the third in line to the throne, they have to maintain all this tradition,” said Pauline Maclaran, a professor of marketing and consumer research at Royal Holloway and the co-author of the upcoming book, Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture.

“They’ll go for three or four names and … be able to make the right nod to the right people,” she said.

And it can’t just be any old moniker, either. It has to have some gravitas: Noble names are steeped in history, which explains why, as royal baby fervour mounted in recent days, thousands of bets rolled in to British bookmakers for James and Alexandra.