The Burns tartan can be used by all with the name which is fairly common throughout Scotland. The surname of Burns has understandably become synonymous with that of Scotland’s great national bard, Robert Burns: but generations of others of the name have also made an indelible mark not only on the pages of Scotland’s dramatic story but on the international stage. Ironically for a name that has such a strong resonance for Scots, its roots lie in theOld English word ‘burn’, or ‘bourne’, meaning ‘stream’, and indicating someone who lived near a stream, or burn. A rather more martial derivation, however, is that it stems from the Old English ‘beorn’, meaning ‘warrior.’Varieties of spelling have included Burn, Burness, Bernis, and Bernes, and the form ‘Burns’ does not appear in Scottish records until the seventeenth century. The singular form of ‘Burn’, however, was popular in Dumfriesshire and the Borders as early as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
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