Origin of the name "ALBERGA" [cross posted to benelux, italian, nordic, britain]

[Cyril & Sandy Alberga]

I've been puzzling over my family name.

My own family are descended from Sephardic Jews from Jamaica, West
Indies. But the name occurs in a number of seemingly unrelated places.

England, Jamaica, the Netherlands, the Dutch Antilles and Surinam can be
(mostly) considered one area, given the spread of the Sephardim to
England and the New World via Amsterdam. But even here there are
discrepancies, as the name is not uncommon in the north of the
Netherlands, in areas which are (relatively) far from the centers of
Jewish refuge, such as Friesland.

As far as England is concerned I haven't been able to tell if the family
came to Jamaica from the Dutch possessions (say, when Recife was taken
back by the Portuguese) to Jamaica and then to England, or from the
Netherlands to England and hence to Jamaica!

Another pocket of Alberga's is centered on Barri, in the south of Italy.
We have met people with the name who are certain that their families
have always been Christian.

Finally, Alberga turns up as the name of a suburb of Helsinki. I have
not determined if it also occurs as a family name there or in Sweden.
(Couldn't figure out the on-line telephone listing for either country.)

If anyone has any information which might clear up some of my confusion
I would very much appreciate it.

Yours,
Cyril N. Alberga

[Joe Pessarra]

"Cyril & Sandy Alberga" <calb...@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
news:MR60c.7494$TF2....@nwrdny02.gnilink.net...

> I've been puzzling over my family name.
>

An Internet search for Alberga+genealogy will get you about 179 sites to
investigate.

Sweden phone directory shows no Alberga, Alberge, or Adelberge listings.

220 Alberga listings in Italy phone directory on the Net.

17 Alberga listings in Germany phone directory.

2 Alberga listings in Spain.

2 Alberga and 123 Alberge listings in France.

26 Alberga listings in Netherlands.

4 Alberga listings in Belgium.

Joe in Texas

[Cyril & Sandy Alberga]

I think most of the Alberga+genealogy hits are data which I supplied to
various people, or else relatives. There is one odd very early entry
(1300's? something like that, but it seems to be out in left field as
far as my family is concerned. There is some fairly strong evidence
that in the 1700's the name may have been spelled Alburger, at least
there are Bevis Marks Synagogue records with that spelling which are
probably an ancestor.

Thanks for the phone statistics.

Cyril N. Alberga

[Don Moody]

In message <MR60c.7494$TF2....@nwrdny02.gnilink.net>, Cyril & Sandy
Alberga <calb...@bellatlantic.net> writes

I'd suggest 'your' confusion is because you are looking for order in a
situation which is inherently confused. If you looked at it historically
you might be able to accept 'as is' a number of different things rather
than seek one non-existent order.

Sephardim wander. Pulled by trade and pushed by persecution. There is a
random element on both processes. I've been to Jamaica, where I have no
family, but not been to Barbados where I have family. Why? Business took
me to Jamaica. I do business with the Bajans either in New York or in
England. My American cousin in New York hasn't been to Jamaica but has
been to Barbados because that is the way his business worked out. One of
my daughters had a contract in the Isles of Scilly. Not even she knows
today whether its Estonia or Hungary next. She'll take whichever offers
first, and hope the other can be delayed rather than lost.

Torquemada illustrates two persecutional changes. Some Jews decided that
becoming Christians was a way out, and their descendants might well
think the family was 'always' Christian. Others 'stood not upon the
order of their going'. They scarpered. In any direction. Just as
happened with pogroms in Russia, anti-semitism in German-speaking areas,
and all the other persecutions over the centuries. Who wound up where
was largely unpredictable.

In any case, what is in a name? Once people start wandering they have to
consider whether 'their' name is usable at their destination; and it
often is not. So they change. What they pick and why they pick it is
almost random. Why did Herr Rothschild become Mr Rothschild? Why did
Herr Berg become Mr Mortimer? Are all Mr Salmon (including the Christian
branches) named after the same fish or colour and descended from one
man? (I know they are not.) Are all Mr Maxwells named after the same
coffee? Are they even all Jewish (I know they are not.) Sebag-Montefiore
is a name to play with in Jewish financial circles, but it was also the
name of an Anglican bishop. Sachs as the name of the Chief Rabbi would
appear to be straightforwardly Jewish, but it isn't. Some Sachs or Sax
or Saxe are merely indications that an ancestor came from or passed
through Saxony. Andrade was a Christian English actuarial family. Or was
it? Originally it was Portuguese and Spanish Jews. The muddle and
confusion goes on and on, and is normal. It would be order and system
which is abnormal.

Then you've got intermarriage. It does make a difference which parent is
the Jew and which is the non-Jew. Then you've got plenty of proper DNA
studies of gene frequencies in isolated populations of 'Jews' compared
to gene frequencies in both larger agglomerations of Jews and with the
non-Jewish population surrounding the isolated. What is found is that
gene frequencies of the isolated Jews are very much more like those
amongst surrounding non-Jews than they are to those of Jews in general.
Both factors lead to the legitimate question 'What is a Jew', and both
show there is no simple 'sharp' answer. The concept 'Jew' is unsharp,
fuzzy. If you can't define exactly what you are looking for, it can't be
a surprise that you can't find an exact answer.

In summary, relax, go with the flow, work at finding real individuals,
but don't continue in a stew about what cannot be known about multiple
and various name origins.

Don
--
Dr D P Moody, Ashwood, Exeter Cross, Liverton, Newton Abbot, Devon,
England TQ12 6EY
Tel: +44(0) 1626 821725 Fax: +44(0) 1626 824912

[Staffan Storteir]

It can be added to your list of records - maybe only as a matter of
curiosity - that there is a farm named Alberga in Ähtäri/Etseri in
Finland. Most of them used the designation A(h)lberg as last name,
though.
Regards,
Staffan
http://sydaby.eget.net/swe/emi_intro.htm

[Cyril & Sandy Alberga]

Don Moody wrote:

Thank you for a very well organized exposition, better organized than
the situation it describes!

However, I do have to say that I am not "in a stew", just curious. I
have some hints which I omitted from my original post, hoping that I
would not bias responses. For example, I know that the Finnish town
Alberga is interpreted as the Swedish word for "alder hill" (there being
a residual stratum of Swedish in Finland, particularly in the south and
southwest). I also know that in medieval times Barri was a center of
Jewish culture and learning, probably before the Iberian expulsion
(sorry, I can't put my hands on the reference just now).

I am wishing that I had a better idea of where to look next, having
(probably) traced my own line through Jamaica back to England. I have
always assumed The Netherlands, but so far haven't found the thread. If
it is The Netherlands, then the question would be, did the family pick
up the name there, leave it there, or simply coincidently have a name
close enough to an existing one to mutate toward a common form? The
question of Italy (Barri) is of interest, as establishing the existence
of Jews with the name Alberga there would at least allow the possibility
of the name having continuity before the family reached northwest Europe.

I know most of this is pure speculation, but I find that it is better to
have a thesis to hang facts on and test, either refute or buttress, then
to simply lay the (scanty) facts out and hope for inspiration. In fact,
I think that if any of us were to closely examine our patterns of
research we would find such underlying theses guiding our choice of
places and sources. Not being aware of these biases makes it harder to
abandon them and pursue other lines of investigation.

In other words, we all have theories we are trying to prove, but if we
are unaware of them it is harder to abandon them. It is also easier to
ignore contrary evidence and to miss facts which seem irrelevant without
a structure to hold them.

I hope I'm not becoming incoherent here, but that is my best attempt at
articulating my thoughts.

Cyril N. Alberga

[Don Moody]

In message <8Zn0c.10676$qX5....@nwrdny03.gnilink.net>, Cyril & Sandy
Alberga <calb...@bellatlantic.net> writes

It's a very good attempt at articulating your thoughts. And exposes even
more clearly the point I was trying to make.

If this were an orthodox experimental scientific investigation, then
what you are saying is that you are at the hypothesis stage and are
seeking tests of the hypothesis (or -theses). What I was saying is that
you are at the observation stage, don't yet have the grounds for
advancing a testable hypothesis, and may have to resign yourself to
there being no single hypothesis which explains all occurrences of
Alberga and variants.

For a silly example. Sephardim had contact with the Moors, who invented
and named Algebra. Of which Alberga is an anagram. Were the Sephardic
Alberga therefore Jewish equivalents of Moorish algebraists? Maybe they
were no more a genetic family than a community of Benedictines is a
genetic family. Maybe they were members of a school of mathematics.
Those ideas could be tested, and it could take up a lot of time and
energy. But my guess on the chance of proving such silly ideas is that
it is so low as not to be worth the effort. Far better simply to observe
who and what the Albergas were, and worry about hypothesising later.

But it's your family. Do as you will. I'm only making suggestions based
on doing research in areas where answers cannot be known for sure. In
particular, finding leads to new drugs by considering native medicines
as used in many cultures through space and time. That was what took me
to UWI at Mona.

[Hugo de Vries [gen]]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SephardicForum
http://www.orthohelp.com/geneal/sefardim.htm#TOC
http://www.jewishgen.org/
http://www.sephardim.com/html/translated_names.html
Alborge (S) A locality in Zaragoza

Alberga
(25) From the book, "The Jews of Jamaica", by Richard D. Barnett and Philip
Wright. This book contains tombstone inscriptions and dates of death from
1663-1880. Only names that appeared Sephardic are included here.(~)

Regards,
Hugo

Hugo de Vries
http://kibrahacha.com/stories/gen
Families: de Vries (Schermerhorn, Spaarndam, Amsterdam), Joha (Eupen,
Friesland, Leiden), Van Asperen (Streefkerk, Sliedrecht), Kaal/Karel (Wehl,
Renkum), de Vries (Amsterdam, Paramaribo), Brook (Sneek, Paramaribo),
Abendanon (St. Eustatius, Paramaribo), Robles de Medina (Spanje, Paramaribo)
(16,700+ persons)
On October 28, 2004 you might be visitor number 200,000 to
http://kibrahacha.com/
Website inaccessible on Feb 23, Mar 1.

==============================
Gain access to over two billion names including the new Immigration
Collection with an Ancestry.com free trial. Click to learn more.
http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=4930&sourceid=1237

[John Morten Malerbakken]

"Joe Pessarra" <pess...@cox-internet.com> wrote in message
news:1042699...@corp.supernews.com...

>
> "Cyril & Sandy Alberga" <calb...@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
> news:MR60c.7494$TF2....@nwrdny02.gnilink.net...
> > I've been puzzling over my family name.
> >
>
> An Internet search for Alberga+genealogy will get you about 179 sites to
> investigate.
>
> Sweden phone directory shows no Alberga, Alberge, or Adelberge listings.
>

Depending on how many "language twists" you want to consider when looking at
the name. There is a variation to this name spelled "Alberg" or "Ahlberg"
which you may want to look closer at. There are more than 250 Ahlberg listed
under Ahlberg, 35 under Alberg, in the Swewdish directory.

John Morten

[Mrs Julie Goucher]

Cyril

>Another pocket of Alberga's is centered on Barri, in the south of Italy.

Have a look at http://gens.labo.net/it/cognomi/ and insert the surname
ALBERGA in the search facility at the top left. It will produce for you
three maps showing the concentration of the surname.

Also it might be worth posting to the Anglo Italian mailing list at Rootsweb
or
contacting the Anglo Italian FHS http://www.anglo-italianfhs.og.uk

--
--
Regards,
Julie Goucher
angler...@virgin.net
Anglers Rest Home Page www.anglers-rest.net
C J Genealogical Collections www.C-J.org.uk
ORLANDO One Name Study ~ GOONS Member 3925
www.orlando-ons.co.uk

---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.598 / Virus Database: 380 - Release Date: 29/02/2004

[Eve McLaughlin]

In article <MR60c.7494$TF2....@nwrdny02.gnilink.net>, Cyril & Sandy
Alberga <calb...@bellatlantic.net> writes

>I've been puzzling over my family name.
>
>My own family are descended from Sephardic Jews from Jamaica, West
>Indies. But the name occurs in a number of seemingly unrelated places.
>
>England, Jamaica, the Netherlands, the Dutch Antilles and Surinam can be
>(mostly) considered one area, given the spread of the Sephardim to
>England and the New World via Amsterdam. But even here there are
>discrepancies, as the name is not uncommon in the north of the
>Netherlands, in areas which are (relatively) far from the centers of
>Jewish refuge, such as Friesland.
>
>As far as England is concerned I haven't been able to tell if the family
>came to Jamaica from the Dutch possessions (say, when Recife was taken
>back by the Portuguese) to Jamaica and then to England, or from the
>Netherlands to England and hence to Jamaica!

My first thought is that the name is cognate with the French Auberge,
inn, and it sounds Italian, Albergha. It does not at first sight appear
to be Jewish. However, there were Italian Jews who were early settlers
in England, in the Sephardic settlement period. The family of Benjamin
Disraeli have an Italian background. The name could have been acquried
by a Sephardic innkeeper in Iraly.
>
Of course, a variant of Ahlberge or Aldberge is possible, if the owner
insisted on pronouncing the final e
--
Eve McLaughlin

Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians
Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society

[Tony]

perhaps given Sephardic origin it could be from a middle eastern "al
Bergha.." or something?

"Eve McLaughlin" <e...@varneys.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:JjuIAsAZ...@varneys.demon.co.uk...

> In article <MR60c.7494$TF2....@nwrdny02.gnilink.net>, Cyril & Sandy
> Alberga <calb...@bellatlantic.net> writes
> >I've been puzzling over my family name.
> >
> >My own family are descended from Sephardic Jews from Jamaica, West

> >SNIP