Camrose
City
Incorporated Jan 1. 1955, population in 1968 was 8,477 "IBM" 1976.
83 H
Approximately 70 km south-east of Edmonton.
The name for this city was previously Sparling; however, that name became so frequently
confused with that of Sperling in Manitoba and Stirling in Alberta that it was changed
to Camrose and the post office opened with this name in May 1905. The precise derivation of the name is not known. Perhaps the most reasonable, and possibly authentic explanation of the name is that it was selected from the British postal guide in 1905, and named
after Camrose in Dyfed, Wales. There are two versions of the origin of the name. The first version is that it appears in 1324 as "kamros," from the Welsh, "cam rhos," which means crooked moor, but this in itself is a variation, so it may be that Camrose is an Anglicized form of "camrhos," cam meaning crooked, and rhos meaning heather. A second possibility is that the name means "valley of roses" from the Welsh "cwm," which means valley and thus cwm rose.