Burns
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) person who lives by a stream or streams; (ii) person who lives in a house by a stream; (iii) from Irish Gaelic O Broin; (iv) anglicization of Bernstein
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 25 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/bɜːnz/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Burns is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 94th most common surname.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.4K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 1.5K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #508 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 581 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.4K (inferred from the name graph)
165,925 people, 2010
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)(i) person who lives by a stream or streams; (ii) person who lives in a house by a stream; (iii) from Irish Gaelic O Broin; (iv) anglicization of Bernstein
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Burns, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Burns counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #132 | 165,925 | 1 in 2K | 166K | Burns | 581 |
| GB United Kingdom | #114 | ≈49,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Burns | 305 |
| CA Canada | #124 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Burns | 245 |
| AU Australia | #119 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Burns | 233 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈5,500 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Burns | 49 |
| IE Ireland | #94 | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Burns | 128 |
| NZ New Zealand | #137 | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Burns | 126 |
165,925 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Burns is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Variant spelling of Burness; from Bernes/Burnes, perhaps ‘burn-house’. Recorded from the early 16th century; linked to Kincardineshire and Robert Burns.
as a nameScottish Surnames
In English, third-person singular simple present indicative of burn
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, George, US comedian; pers. name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Irish, This Scottish locative name, numerous in Ulster and to a lesser extent in Munster, is widely used for O’Beirne, Birrane and Byrne. It is also the modern form of Mac Conboirne, formerly anglicized Conborney, a north Connacht sept. Bibl; App
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In Croatian, škotski pjesnik, sakupljao je i prerađivao stare narodne pjesme; nove piše na škotskom dijalektu i u njima oživljava narodni duh, što mu donosi status škotskog nacionalnog pjesnika
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Robert Burnsb. 1759GBScottish poet and lyricist (1759–1796)
- Mary Burnsb. 1821GBworking-class Irish woman, best known as the lifelong partner of Friedrich Engels
- Jesse Jacksonb. 1941USnot in their usual nameAmerican Baptist minister, activist, civil rights leader, politician, and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition (1941–2026)
- William Joseph Burnsb. 1956USAmerican diplomat (born 1956)
- Anna Burnsb. 1962GBNorthern Irish writer
- Scott Z. Burnsb. 1962USAmerican screenwriter, producer, and director
- Edward Burnsb. 1968USAmerican actor and director
- Richard Burnsb. 1971GBBritish rally driver (1971–2005)
- Heather Burnsb. 1975USAmerican actress
- Brooke Burnsb. 1978USAmerican fashion model and game show host (born 1978)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)41 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 166K | #155 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 162K | #141 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 159K | #162 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Burns mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) person who lives by a stream or streams; (ii) person who lives in a house by a stream; (iii) from Irish Gaelic O Broin; (iv) anglicization of Bernstein Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Burns?
- In English /bɜːnz/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Burns have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 166 thousand people named Burns, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled burns.
- How common is the name Burns?
- In the United States, the national register counted 165,925 people named Burns in 2010, about 1 in 2.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Burns compared with other names?
- In the United States, Burns is the 132nd most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Burns?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/burnsThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Burns” — the 132nd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.