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I was wondering if anyone here knew anything about the use of the first name 'Urgel', especially in Quebec. My great-aunts and great-uncles have some wonderful French-Canadian names, but none as seemingly unique as my Great-Uncle Urgel (called 'Urgie' by the family). A little searching around has found only one other person by the name, and turned up the fact that Urgell is a diocese in Catalonia. The Catholic connection is obvious, but there's no Spanish influence in my family or much in Canada as a whole.

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Any ideas about what significance might have prompted families in the first half of the 20th century to use it as a first name? The only other thing I could turn up was that 'Urgel Bourgie', a chain of Montreal funeral homes, got its start around then, but the founder's name was Henri Bourgie - no clue whom the 'Urgel' part came from.