Much in a Name

Naming princes is a ticklish task. On account of the Irish it was necessary to include "Patrick" among the seven given names of Edward of Wales. On account of the Slovenes plump Queen Marie of Jugoslavia was obliged, last week, to select a Slovene appellation as the principal name of her lately born third son (TIME, July 22).

Buxom Queen Marie's stern consort, Alexander I, is called "King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes"--three peoples commonly called "Jugoslavs" (southern Slavs) for short. The potent, ruthless Serbs are the dominant race. Therefore the first son of Their Majesties--their chubby, five-year-old Crown Prince--bears the grand old Serbian name of PETER. When a second man-child was born (TIME, Jan. 30, 1928) the Croats got their innings, for the babe was soon Croatianly christened TOMISLAV. With Serbs and Croats satisfied it was high time, last week, to think of appeasing the Slovenes. Anxiously Queen Marie and King Alexander examined the relative merits of such typically Slovenic names as:

Kocel

Erjavec Jurcic

Kopitar

To make the day of christening doubly joyful King Alexander decreed the pardon of several prominent Slovenes arrested since His Majesty proclaimed himself Dictator of Jugoslavia (TIME, Jan. 14). There was only one jarring note, significant, typically Balkan.

The jar came when the popular Slovene priest, Father Anton Koroshetz, onetime Prime Minister, was suddenly demoted by King Alexander from the important status of Minister of Communications to relative insignificance as Minister of Forests and Mines. Deliberately the Dictator-King had put off shelving popular Slovene Koroshetz to a moment when the Slovene people as a whole would be applauding Royalty's choice of a Slovene name for the baby Prince. Such a trick is typical of King Alexander, would only work of course on a people as simple as his peasants. Time after time His Majesty has employed the old ruse with success. Notably he waited to proclaim himself Dictator until the onset of a rustic holiday which, for a week every year, renders most of the peasants in Jugoslavia convivially tipsy, broadly complacent at whatever their Serb King may do.