Maximiliano Gustav Richard Albrecht Agustin von Götzen-Itúrbide

What a name! I want that name! Mine is obviously NOT difficult enough to pronounce or spell, judge's statement or no!

Cool. One of those princes adopted by the Austrian emperor and his wife later renounced his claim to the throne, went back to Mexico, criticized the government enough that he got exiled, and then spent the rest of his life as a professor of French and Spanish at Georgetown. (And his mother, who had the rather boring name of Alice Green, was the granddaughter of a US Revolutionary War general.)

(I'm kind of fascinated by people who still keep track of who should be heir to a throne that hasn't existed for generations. When my family was in Italy, we went to a restaurant owned by some Hapsburgs. One of them told us all about the places that he should be prince of.)

One of my friends had a professor who expected students to stand when he entered the room because he was the non-landed prince of somethingorother.

I wish I could remember which school.

Steven Brust (who is a Trotskyite) enjoys laying claim to be the rightful ruler of Hungary. Well, it used to be one of his hobbies; Texas Hold-em and the marriage between himself, Reesa and Kit seem to take up his time these days, not to mention that pesky writing.

One of my friends had a professor who expected students to stand when he entered the room because he was the non-landed prince of somethingorother.

That is hysterical.

If family legend is to be believed, my ancestors were very minor Austrian nobility, back when, for a while, the Emperor had the power to make anybody a noble whenever he felt like it. All the supporting facts of the story check out -- the Emperor did in fact have that power during the period in question, he did visit the right part of the Empire at the right time, and the ancestors in the story were innkeepers, which was a pretty popular occupation for Jews at the time and I know that, about two or three generations later, most of the family were innkeepers -- but I seriously doubt that it's true. My best guess is that there's some bit of truth somewhere in the story, but somewhere along the retelling, something like "The Emperor ate at our inn and said he liked it" became "The Emperor liked our inn so much that he made us nobility."

Wow, South Carolina has a wackaloon for a senator in that Joe Wilson.

One of my ancestors was knighted by Henry VIII at his wedding to Anne Boleyn, apparently because the vinegar said ancestor brought was so good. I suspect Henry may have been drunk.

If family legend is to be believed,

I love family legend. According to family legend on my dad's side, we're descended from Vlad the Impaler. Yes, I'm so goth I'm distantly related to Dracula. Wheee!

Family legend says we get to go up to at least the doors of the Clan MacFarlane with open arms to find our long lost kin. One day I want to do that, but I think this is the year, what with Homecoming Scotland 2009.

Family legend says the Gordon branch of Gram's mother's family was related to one George Gordon, which would mean that family can lay claim to a good poet alongside the one who wrote the Worst Poem in the English Language. And, of course Ava Lovelace.

Family tree/legend notes Hollinshed the Historian in there a ways back, too.

(Family Tree Research had me briefly thinking that I might be distantly related to Rik Mayall, but alas, we merely have a mutual 5th cousin through differing branches of said cousin's tree.)