Burgh Burgh Cupar Category="Scots language"Category="Subdivisions of Scotland"
For other meanings, see Burgh (disambiguation).
[image] Burgh (pronounced burruh) is a Scots language and Scottish English word denoting the highly autonomous units of Local government in Scotland, with rights to representation in the Parliament of Scotland, in use from at least the 9th century until their abolition in 1975 when a new regional structure of local government was introduced across the country. Often, but not always, based upon a town.

Etymology

The Word burgh has cognates in other Germanic languages. For example, borough in English, burg in German, and borg in both Danish and Swedish; the equivalent word is also to be found in Frisian, Dutch, Norwegian, and Icelandic.

The Scots language burgh and the English language borough are derived from the Old English language word burh (with dialectal variants including burg, beorh, beorg, and byrig). The Old English word was originally used for a fortified town, and was related to the verb beorgan (cf. Dutch and German bergen), meaning "to keep, save, make secure".

A number of other European languages have cognate words which were borrowed from the Germanic languages during the Middle Ages, including brog in Irish, bwr or bwrc, meaning "wall, rampart" in Welsh, bourg in French, borgo in Italian, and burgo in Spanish (hence the place-name Burgos).

Also related are the words bourgeois and belfry (both from the French), and burglar; more distantly, it is related to words meaning "hill" or "mountain" in a number of languages (cf. the second element of Iceberg).

See also