Burnside
A Scottish and northern English place-based surname meaning “by the stream/brook side.”
The #4,009 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 34,851 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Burnside is a topographic surname built from burn, a northern English and Scots word for a stream or brook, and side, meaning the side or edge of something. The literal sense is “dweller by the stream side” or “by the brook bank.” In some cases it may also come from places called Burnside, which are found in northern Britain.
History
The name is especially associated with Scotland and northern England, where burn is a common dialect word for a stream. Early surname writers treated Burnside as a straightforward local or topographic name, and later dictionaries repeated that explanation. It also appears in modern surname lists as a fairly regular compound place-name surname.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The same spelling can be either a surname or a place name, and there are villages called Burnside in parts of Scotland.
From the historical record
“BURNMAN. See Bourn and Man. BURNSIDE. Ylllages in the shires of Fife, Nairn, and Kincardine. BURNUP. Probably Burnhope, a local name. BURR. Said to be of Dutch extrac- tion. BURRELL. Plain, rude, unpolished. ' Borel-clerks,' lay clerks; ' borel-folks,' lay-”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom