What's In A Name: Ambrose, Zoe, Zoey

Ambrose-This name goes back to transliterated Greek "Ambrosios," which meant "immortal." This was taken by Latin as "Ambrosius," and the name was popularized in parts of Europe because of Ambrose, who was the Bishop of Milan and an important Christian leader in the 300s, who was also a saint known for helping the poor. The name has never been especially popular in England or in English speaking countries; and to be quite honest, it's unclear to me exactly why the name is rendered as "Ambrose" in English, although this spelling seems to be from the Middle Ages. Spanish uses "Ambrosio," Portuguese uses "Ambrósio," French uses "Ambroise" and Dutch uses (apparently rarely used) "Ambroos," "perhaps" taken from Spanish? The Spanish branch of the German Habsburg family ruled the Dutch areas for awhile and the pronunciation is virtually the same as the English form. In my life I've only personally known one guy named "Ambrose" (given name).    

Zoe/Zoey-The female given name "Zoe" goes back to transliterated Greek, where it was used as a translation of the Hebrew name "Eve." It means "life." "Zoe" is a distant relative of the English word "quick," which in its noun form was once spelled "cwic," and meant, "life, living, living person;" as in, "the quick and the dead." Neither "Zoe" nor its phonetic rendering of "Zoey" have ever been especially common names in England or English speaking countries.  


I consulted the following for this article: 1) "A World of Baby Names," by Teresa Norman, published by Perigee/Penguin Group, New York, 2003. 2) www.behindthename.com

WORD HISTORY:
Cloister-This word is related to the verb "close," a word of Latin derivation borrowed by English, and it is related to the first part of "claustrophobia," which is also from Latin, and it is distantly related to "clavicle," another Latin-derived word borrowed by English via French. It goes back to Indo European "klau," which meant, "hook, peg." This gave Latin the verb "claudere," meaning "to close, to shut" thus also, "to confine." Its participle form gave Latin the noun "claustrum," meaning "a bolt or bar used to shut off a space or room;" thus also, the result of such a shutting off; that is, "an enclosure, a confined area," which later took on the meaning, "area of a monastery closed off to non clergy or non members of a religious order." This was borrowed into Old English from Latin with later influence on the spelling, circa 1300, as "cloystre/cloistre," from French "cloistre," which was from the same Latin source, and with the additional broader meaning, "monastery," as well as, "separate part of a monastery for religious seclusion." By the 1400s, it also had the meaning, "walls or barriers enclosing an open court yard." Borrowed by many of the other Germanic languages, where its primary meaning is "monastery": German has "Kloster," Low German has "Klooster," Dutch has "klooster," West Frisian "kleaster," Danish, Norwegian and Swedish all have "kloster," and Icelandic has "klaustur."