Bambrick

This unusual name is now found mainly in Dublin in the Republic of Ireland, and has become almost exclusively an Irish name, although its origins are either English or Scottish. As an English name, Bambrick is a variant form of the locational surname 'Bainbridge', from the places so called in North and West Yorkshire. The placename is recorded as 'Bainebrigs' in 1218, and means 'bridge on the River Bain', from the Old Norse 'beinn', straight, used in a transferred sense of 'direct, helpful', applied to the river, with the Old English pre 7th Century 'brycg', bridge. The second possible origin of the surname 'Bambrick' is as a locational surname from the Scottish place 'Bambreich', of unknown origin. In Ireland the surname first appears in the beginning of the 17th Century, when Henry, Hugh and Thomas Bambrick of Leix (Queen's County) obtained 'pardons'; the name was thereafter mostly found in County Leix. One Henry Bambrick was outlawed as a Jacobite supporter in 1691. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Elizabeth Bambrecke (marriage to Willyam Demote), which was dated June 8th 1557, St. Olave's, Hart Street, London, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, 'Good Queen Bess', 1558-1603. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.