Burgher

This interesting and unusual name has an intriguing history in England, it is found occasionally recorded as a surname from the 13th Century onwards, but there is no evidence of it as a vocabulary word until the 16th Century. In the modern idiom the surname has many variant spellings including Burger, Burgher, Burker and Borger are German and Dutch/Flemish in origin, the derivation of the English name is from the Middle English word 'burg', meaning a (fortified) town, and that of the German from the medeival German 'burc'. In all cases the name is a status surname for a freeman of a town, particularly one who was a member of the town's governing council, though it later came to mean, in more general terms, 'inhabitant of a borough', 'citizen'. John, son of Elizabeth Burger, was christened at St. James's, Clerkenwell, London, in 1753. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Henry le Burger, which was dated 1275, in the London Hundred Rolls, during the reign of King Edward 1, known as the Hammer of the Scots, 1272 - 1307. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.