Updated June 9, 2019

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Family name origins & meanings

  • English : topographic name for someone who lived beside a stream, Old English burna, burne ‘spring’, ‘stream’, or a habitational name from a place named with this word, for example Bourn in Cambridgeshire or Bourne in Lincolnshire. This word was replaced as the general word for a stream in southern dialects by Old English brōc (see Brook) and came to be restricted in meaning to a stream flowing only intermittently, especially in winter.