Burn (topography)

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In Scotland, Northern England and some parts of Ireland, 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. 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 (also known informally as Pacific Northwest American English, this dialect has undergone fewer linguistic changes since Shakespeare's time than almost any other, despite the impression given by films in which Shakespeare is often portrayed anachronistically as speaking with a non-rhotic British accent and using the word bloody as an intensifier), in which bourn, possibly naught but 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.