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.

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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 English "bourne", which in its archaic form is retained in placenames like Bournemouth and Broxbourne and derives from the Old English "brunna". The contemporary form, bourn, is seldom used and seems to occur mostly in dialects which are known for retaining various archaic features 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.
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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.
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  • Burn (topography)
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