The monarch chooses his or her regnal name, not necessarily his or her first name — King George VI, King Edward VII and Queen Victoria did not use their first names.

They tried to explain that nowhere in Zara Yaqob's list of regnal names did that title occur.

Some rulers, such as Wu Zetian, or rebel leaders also had similar style regnal names when they were alive.

In the mid-tenth century the Kara-Khanids converted to Islam and adopted Muslim names and honorifics, but retained Turkic regnal titles such as Khan, Khagan, Ilek ( Ilig ) and Tegin.

Some who maintain the 586 date therefore maintain that in this one instance, Ezekiel, without explicitly saying so, switched to the regnal years of Zedekiah, although Ezekiel apparently regarded Jeconiah as the rightful ruler and never names Zedekiah in his writing.

Ancient rulers in many parts of the world took regnal names or throne names which were different from their personal name.

Rebel leaders may also take regnal names.

While many rulers of East Asia ( including in China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan ) took regnal names based on Chinese characters, some monarchs of Xu, Xiongnu, Tuyuhun Kingdom, Rouran Khaganate, Göktürks, Uyghur Khaganate and Mongol took Chinese transliterated non-Chinese regnal names.

In 1978, Albino Luciani became the first pope to use two names for his regnal name when he took the name John Paul I, including the " I ".

Antipopes also have regnal names, and also use the ordinal to show their position in the line of previous pontiffs with their names.

Coptic Popes also choose regnal names distinct from their given names.

In the various extant traditional states of the West African nation of Nigeria, the regnal names of the titled monarchs, who are known locally as the traditional rulers, serve two very important functions within the monarchical system.

Beyond that which is described above, regnal names also serve in Nigeria and indeed in much of Africa as chronological markers in much the same way that those of Europe do ( e. g. the Victorian era ).

Use of a namesake's name in a leadership position may indicate certain things, usually referring to certain traits of the namesake, such as in the use of papal regnal names.

Because he was not a legitimate pope, the next three Pope Johns, John XVII, John XVIII and John XIX, took the regnal numbers XVI, XVII and XVIII, but some historians of the Middle Ages corrected their names including Antipope Philagathos among the Popes, and the wrongly corrected sequencing was never subsequently corrected.

The names indicate that these years were fairly peaceful ones for the kingdom of Ammi-Saduqa, who was primarily engaged in enriching and enlarging the temples, and a few other building projects, such as building a wall at the mouth of the Euphrates in his 11th regnal year.

Upon assuming office, each Hierarch picks a new regnal name from a list of names of former Hierarchs, similar to the practice of some Orthodox Patriarchs.

The highest magistrates were eponymous, i. e. each year was officially identified ( like a regnal year in a monarchy ) by the two consuls ' names, though there was a more practical numerical dating ab urbe condita ( i. e. by the era starting with the mythical foundation year of Rome ).

The regnal year standard is still used with respect to statutes and law reports published in some parts of the United Kingdom and in some Commonwealth countries ( England abandoned this practice in 1963 ): a statute signed into law in Canada between February 6, 1994 and February 5, 1995 would be dated 43 Elizabeth II, for instance.

Although the second Frederick of Sicily, he chose to call himself " Frederick III " ( being one of the rare medieval monarchs who actually used a regnal number ) — presumably because only some fifty years before, his well-known and remembered great-grandfather had reigned Sicily and also used an official ordinal: Fridericus secundus, imperator etc ..

By the end of the First Intermediate Period, some nomarchs ruled their nomes as minor potentates, such as the nomarch Nehry of Hermopolis, who dated inscriptions by his own regnal year.

A regnal name, or reign name, is a formal name used by some monarchs and popes during their reigns.

If a monarch rules more than one realm, he or she may carry different ordinals in each one, as they are each assigned chronologically, but some realms may have had different numbers of rulers of the same regnal name previously, usually from a different dynasty.

There is some confusion over the numbering of these rulers: scholars who give Arsaces II the name " Artabanus I " add one to the regnal number of his successors, thus counting up to Artabanus V.

* 1160 – 61 Magnus ( II ) of Sweden ( the regnal list published by the royal court of Sweden includes him as a member of Stenkil dynasty ; some tend to call him as the " last " monarch of the House of Stenkil which however is a genealogically debatable concept ), was the son of a daughter of Inge the Elder's son Ragvald.

Kamose is usually ascribed a reign of three years ( his highest attested regnal year ), although some scholars now favor giving him a longer reign of approximately five years.

Hatshepsut, an extremely successful pharaoh, celebrated her Sed jubilee at Thebes — in what some Victorian-era historians insist was only her sixteenth regnal year — but she did this by counting the time she was the strong consort of her weak husband, and some recent research indicates that she did exercise authority usually reserved for pharaohs during his reign, thereby acting as a co-ruler rather than as his Great Royal Wife, the duties of which were assigned to their royal daughter.

There is also great evidence in the pedigrees and regnal lists of repeated modification, outright fabrication, and unceremonious deletion, at least for the early period ( all concerned sources ), with some criticisms quite severe, although this is also a problem with Connachta and Laigin material.

Given that Castiglioni had been called Pius VIII by Pope Pius VII even before his death in 1823, and that in the 1823 conclave Leo XII said he " some day was to be Pius VIII ", it was a foregone conclusion that he would take that regnal name upon becoming Pope.

Though most monarchs of the United Kingdom have used their first baptismal name as their regnal name, on three occasions monarchs have varied from this trend ; in the first of these, Queen Victoria had been christened Alexandrina Victoria, but was titled Princess Victoria from birth and took the throne under that name.

In 1910, G. A. Reisner found sixty-three inscribed potsherds while excavating the royal palace at Samaria, which were later dated to the reign of Jeroboam II and mention regnal years extending from the ninth to the 17th of his reign.

Originally, they were not otherwise distinguished, as regnal numbering was not applied to popes until the 10th century.

Since Judean regnal years were measured from Tishri in the fall, this would place the end of his reign and the capture of the city in the summer of 586 BC.

Demetrius I died of unknown reasons, and the date 180 BC, is merely a suggestion aimed to allow suitable regnal periods for subsequent kings, of which there were several.

The surviving regnal lists show only one king reigning at a time in Kent, but subkingdoms were common among the Anglo-Saxons and from the reign of Hlothhere, in the late seventh century, there is evidence that Kent was usually ruled by two kings, though often one is clearly dominant.

The regnal years used in this reign's coin issue were:

For example, Boris III of Bulgaria and his son Simeon II were given their regnal numbers because the medieval rulers of the First and Second Bulgarian Empire were counted as well even if the Saxe-Coburg dynasty dated only back to 1887 and were only distantly related to the previous monarchies.

This was not without controversy in Scotland, however ; for example, Edward VII's regnal number was occasionally omitted in Scotland, even by the established Church of Scotland, in deference to protests that the previous Edwards were English kings who had " been excluded from Scotland by battle ".

Warfare continued intermittently between the Thebean and Heracleapolitan dynasties until the 14th regnal year of Nebhetepra Mentuhotep II, when the Herakleopolitans were defeated, and the Theban dynasty began to consolidate their rule.

The Inner House of the Scottish Court of Session held that the monarch's title is the sole prerogative of the sovereign, and the Crown had accepted a system whereby regnal numbers were taken from the larger of both former kingdoms in the United Kingdom, that is England and not Scotland.

In antiquity, regnal years were counted from the ascension of a monarch.

During her tenure as queen, royal charters were dated with both her regnal year and that of the king.

The regnal numbers as in Mirian III are modern and were not used by the medieval Georgian authors.

With the accession of Prince Albert Edward as King George VI in 1936, the GPO continued to use up stocks of George V doors as these were simply marked " GR " with no regnal number.

Since Judah's regnal years were counted from Tishri in autumn, this would place the end of his reign and the capture of Jerusalem in the summer of 586 BCE.

During this period, a festival in honour of the Ptolemies, the Ptolemaia, was instituted, and public documents produced by the city were dated by the regnal years of the Ptolemies.

The oldest dating systems were in regnal years, and considered the date as an ordinal, not a cardinal number.