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In Scotland, North East England and some parts of Ireland and New Zealand, burn is a name for watercourses from large streams to small rivers. The term is also used in lands settled by the Scots and Northern English in other countries, notably in Otago, New Zealand, where much of the naming was done by Northumbrian-born surveyor John Turnbull Thomson.
Its cognate in contemporary English is "bourn", from the archaic (early modern) English "bourne", which in its archaic form is retained in placenames like Bournemouth and Broxbourne and derives from the Old English "brunna"[1]. The contemporary form, bourn, is seldom used and seems to occur mostly in dialects which are known for retaining various archaic features (like rhoticism) now lost in England and the eastern United States, such as in Cascadian English, in which bourn, possibly an Americanized spelling of "bourne", is still used today.
Scots Gaelic has the word bùrn, also cognate, but which means "fresh water"; the actual Gaelic for a "burn" is allt (sometimes anglicised as "ault" in placenames.
Etymology
The word originally came from the Northumbrian (i.e. Ynglis) dialect of Old English into the Scots language, Scottish English and Geordie.
Examples
References
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