Bourne Family History

English: topographic name for someone who lived beside a stream from southern Middle English bourne Old English burna burne ‘spring stream’ or a habitational name from a place called with this word for example Bourn in Cambridgeshire or Bourne in Lincolnshire.

In surnames the reference is often to an old stream called burna surviving as the name of a farm. 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.