I'm interested for guessable personal reasons. But also, were people with certain names (Henry, John, Richard etc) just more likely to be king? Matthew has been a common name for a long time, but perhaps it hasn't been a aristocratic name.
I'm not a historian but I found Matthias Corvinus, a 15th century Hungarian and Croatian king, whose name if Anglicized would be Matthew. There was also a Holy Roman Emperor from the 17th century named Matthias.
Not sure what the Wikipedia policy is here but I found them there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias,_Holy_Roman_Emperor and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Corvinus
were people with certain names (Henry, John, Richard etc) just more likely to be king?
What do you mean by this?