Some baby names come with a story. This one came with a whole family tree.
When Michael Jackson’s first child arrived on Feb. 13, 1997, the world got a name it didn’t expect. The little boy was called Prince Michael Jackson Jr. And almost right away, people started guessing why.
The guesses were easy to make. Michael was already known as the King of Pop, so plenty of folks figured “Prince” was a playful royal wink. If the dad is the King, the son must be the Prince, right? Others were sure it was a nod to the singer Prince.
Both guesses missed.
Michael cleared it up himself while the baby was only weeks old. He gave the answer in an interview with OK! magazine, in the issue dated April 4, 1997. The MJ Ultimate Archive, a fan site that keeps Michael’s old interviews, has saved the full text.
What jumps out first is how much he sounds like any new dad who can’t stop talking about his baby. “He smiles all the time and his eyes twinkle when I sing to him,” he said. “He definitely knows my voice.” That same year he was out and about with his little boy, and this clip of the two of them in a hotel lets you see the proud dad for yourself.
Michael Jackson with baby Prince in a hotel in 1997
So where did the name really come from? It came from home. To be exact, it came from his mother’s side of the family.
Katherine Jackson, Michael’s mom, was born Kattie B. Screws on May 4, 1930, in Clayton, Alabama. She was the elder daughter of Martha Upshaw and Prince Albert Screws, who later changed the family name to Scruse. That made Prince Albert Michael’s grandfather. He was born in 1907 and passed away in January 1997, just a few weeks before the baby came.
Here’s how Michael put it to OK!:
“His name is Prince Michael Junior. My grandfather and Great-grandfather were both named Prince, so we have carried on that tradition, and now we have a third Prince in the family.”
That’s the whole answer. It wasn’t a royal joke and it had nothing to do with another singer. It was a family name, handed down the line. Michael said his great-grandfather was named Prince too, which made his son the third one.
A few months later LIFE magazine said the same thing in its own words, in its December 1997 issue: “Prince is nicknamed after Michael’s grandfather and great-grandfather.”
It’s a sweet thing to think about from Katherine’s side. Her father’s name skipped a generation and landed on her grandson, the newest baby in a very big family.
And that family was close. Michael told the magazine, “We talk and see each other all the time. We recently had a big ‘get-together’ where all the cousins met one another for the first time.” So a room full of Katherine’s grandkids got to meet each other, some of them for the very first time, right around the year the third Prince arrived.
The interview had one more fun moment. Asked what kind of dad he’d be, Michael didn’t hesitate.
“The best!”