Gambrell Family History

English (Kent): nickname perhaps for a lame person someone with bad legs or a bent leg from Old French gamberel (compare Middle French gamberel a diminutive of Old French gambe ‘leg’).

In modern English dialects gambrel denotes a ‘bent piece of wood or iron used by butchers for hanging or stretching out carcasses’ and ‘the joint in the upper half of a horse's hind leg the hock’.

Compare Modern French dialect gambier and English dialect gamber which have the same senses as gambrel while in Normandy gambier also signifies ‘someone with bad legs’.