Re: Origin of Ambrose name
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In reply to:
Re: Origin of Ambrose name
10/22/98
Dear Joseph,
If you're Irish please e-mail me and tell me where you are from in Ireland and the US. I am a dual national and am aquainted with hundreds of my Irish, American and Australian cousins many of which like me are lawyers.
At the risk of sounding like a know-it-all and thereby proving that I am an Ambrose, Ambrose is definitely not an English name and not an Irish (Gaelic) name. This may seem contradicted by the fact that Ambroses have been living in Ireland for over six hundred years and in England and Scotland longer than that. The explanation is that Ambrose is a Norman name. You and I are Irishbut our name is Norman. Human beings are the products of blood and DNA from real people living in a real place but the name could be substantially unchanged from the original ancestor. The book "the Surnames of Ireland" equates Ambrose with Mac Ambrois clearly highlighting the French aspect of the Norman name. The same source also equates Ambrose with Mac Cambridge if the route to modern times was through Scotland. History and our own family investigation gives us better answers than a reference book. Ambrosetown still exists. I have been there together with several cousins and I have talked with the elected Irish representative whose district includes Ambrosetown. When you are driving in this part of Wexford County, the road signs welcome you to the home of the Normans! There is absolutely no question that the Ambroses were part of the Irish Norman invasion established Ambrosetown and we are their descendants and inhabit Ireland to this day. There are still several mysteries. Why did the Ambroses move to Newcastle West, Limerick and Cork where they still live in substantial numbers. It is clear that they were are very! close knit clan and still are. They were catholic at the wrong time in history which caused much immigration to Australia and the US in the nineteenth century but the very fact that they were catholic indicates that the Irish Ambroses became a seperate group from the English and Scotch Ambroses which were in England because of the seperate Norman invasion of England.
These facts do not answer the question of the origin of the name Ambrose because even if Ambrois has a French flavor. the Normans were not French they were Vikings and Ambrose is a Viking name. How the Viking name was spelled and what it meant in the Viking (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian ?) at this point in time is beyond me but the presence of Lithuanian and German Ambroses could easily be explained by the Viking root. There is a town in Normandy, France which has the French name equivalent to Ambrosetown. The Ambroses were never homogeneously mixed into these populations, they acted like a seperate clan. If the Norman Ambroses had not decided to be part of the Irish invasion there would be no history of the Ambroses in Ireland (no Ambrose Lightship at Southstreet Seaport in New York). If a group of Norman Ambroses had not decided to be part of the English invasion there would be no English Ambroses no Mac Cambridges and no historian Stephan Ambrose. I suspect then that the same Viking clan also invaded what is present day Germany and Lithuania which were closer to home than Ireland. I would like to know if Ambrose means anything in German (no!) or Lithuanian (doubt it!) When I first learned that there were a lot of Italian Ambroses I concluded that they were not related but had picked up the name from St. Ambrose. However the Normans conquered and occupied Sicily. I think this puzzle has to be solved by the history of the Ambrose name in Italy.
I am fascinated by what appears to me to be genetic traits of people named Ambrose (don't laugh) This should be far fetched but I am struck by extreme intelligence, agression, and extroversion. (leadership characteristics that make for big headaches at family get-togethers) Two factors could lend some support for a genetic factor in my observations. First, these genetic traits which the original Viking Ambroses had to have to an extreme degree could occupy a very large number of genetic chromosome locations (multifactorial traits) and be dominant thereby resisting dilution while still being positively selected for up to the present. Second the Ambrose clan could have been tight enough to resist genetic mixing to some degree. This might be helped by congregation of the clan in one place, necessity for survival and common language ( it can be argued that no Ambrose spoke Gaelic until it was taught in schools in Ireland after seperation from Britain).
As Americans bearing an uncommon name we will always be asked about our relation to other Ambroses. It would be nice if we as a group find the answers.Jack [email protected]
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Re: Origin of Ambrose name
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Re: Origin of Ambrose name
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Re: Origin of Ambrose name
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Re: Origin of Ambrose name
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Re: Origin of Ambrose name
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Re: Origin of Ambrose name