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Until the second half of the 20th century emperors, kings, grand dukes, princes and other hereditary rulers played an important role in Europe. The complex political history of the continent is reflected in their titles.
Title, in law, the means by which the owner has just and legal possession of his or her property. A title of territorial dominion expresses claims to authority in a certain geographical region. Thus, such a title includes a proper name of the region or an ethnical group that gives its name to the region (before the 13th centuries territorial and ethnical names were often interchangeable (e.g., "King of the English" and "King of England"). Later chancelleries used either territorial or ethnical names (latter were used less often). The French Revolution of 1789 introduced the title "King of the French" and the example was followed in Belgium, Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, etc.
A ruler's titles, was used in official documents, and it was considered as an office's attributes rather than mere personal properties. It is clearly seen when a person ruled in more than one land. Before the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, European rulers could unite territories located in the different corners of the continent. Some of these unions did not last for more than one generation (e.g., Austria and Spain, Poland and Sweden, France and Scotland, England and Spain, Sweden and Hesse-Kassel, Russia and Holstein-Gottorp); other existed for centuries (e.g., Austria and Hungary, Naples and Provence, Aragon and Sicily, England and Aquitaine, Croatia and Hungary, Denmark and Norway, Poland and Lithuania). Even if the same person ruled in several countries, they might be governed by separate administrations. Chancelleries of those administrations issued documents with their own local versions of the ruler's titles. (An existence of a local version may tell about a certain degree of territorial autonomy).
The European rulers readily accepted new titles, but reluctantly gave up any. When they acquired a new possession, its name usually was added in their titles. A list of geographical names in rulers' titles might not be a list of their actual possessions. For example, Queen Joan II, who ruled in the Kingdom of Naples in the 15th century, possessed none of the territories mentioned in her long title: Jerusalem, Sicily, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Galicia (in Ukraine), Piedmont, Provence, etc. Many European rulers kept names of lost territories in their titles hoping to regain them in the future (e.g., Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg in the Danish titles, Burgundy in the Spanish titles). As time went on some of these claims lost actuality but the names remained in the titles (e.g., Jerusalem in the titles of the Emperors of Austria, the Kings of Italy, Spain, Naples, etc.). A ruler might consider one of his title as a family name, and kept it even if it had been recognized that the corresponding land belonged to another state (e.g., Savoy for the Kings of Italy, Lorraine and Habsburg for the Emperors of Austria, Nassau and Orange for the Kings of the Netherlands, Hohenzollern for the Kings of Prussia, etc.). The inheritance practices adopted by many German noble families contributed to increasing number of territorial names in some European titles. These practices considered each member of a noble family as co-owner of ancestral possessions, and allowed sharing titles. Before the 19th century, when a member of those German families ascended to a European throne, his family’s title often merged with a royal title (e.g., the titles of the Houses of Austria in Spain and Hungary; of Holstein in Denmark, Sweden, and Russia; of Bavaria-Palatinate in Denmark and Sweden, etc.). Thus, the number of geographical names in official styles of European rulers grew from the 14th century on. In the 18th century there were several rulers whose titles included more than twenty territorial names (e.g., Austria, Russia, Prussia, Spain, Sweden, Savoy, Nassau-Orange, etc.).
From the 19th century, one can see a different trend. The multi-name titles became less fashionable than before.
The kings of Greece, of Belgium, of Serbia, of Romania, of Bulgaria, of Norway and of Albania,
the European monarchies established in the 19th and the 20th centuries, had only one territorial name intheir titles.
Some countries (e.g., Austria, Prussia, Russia, Württemberg, etc.) introduced three official forms of the state title, Great, Middle and Short.
The Short form, which included a few names of the most important possessions, was used in most official documents.
The Middle form included names of main possessions. Only the Great or Grand form included all names, and was reserved for special occasions.
In the 1970s, the multi-name traditional versions of the royal titles of Sweden and Denmark
were replaced with the simplified versions that include only one geographical name.