Burney
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) person from Bernay, Normandy; place-name meaning 'Brenno's settlement'; (ii) from Irish Gaelic Mac Biorna 'son of Biorna'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈbɝni/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Burney is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 36K(measured from records)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 47K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 49K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 384 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
≈11,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Gabon, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) person from Bernay, Normandy; place-name meaning 'Brenno's settlement'; (ii) from Irish Gaelic Mac Biorna 'son of Biorna'
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Burney 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Burney | 49 |
| US United States | 9,126 | 1 in 36K | 9.1K | Burney | 384 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Burney | 125 |
| CA Canada | ≈700 est. | ≈1 in 54K | — | Burney | 73 |
| EG Egypt | ≈670 est. | ≈1 in 154K | — | Burney | 4 |
| AU Australia | ≈550 est. | ≈1 in 47K | — | Burney | 80 |
| GA Gabon | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 1 | — | 2 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 30K | — | Burney | 34 |
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; Ministere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative). 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)
Burney is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A surname from Anglo-Norman.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Charles Burneyb. 1726GBEnglish music historian (1726-1814)
- James Burneyb. 1750GBRoyal Navy admiral (1750-1821)
- Fanny Burneyb. 1752GBEnglish satirical novelist, diarist, playwright (1752-1840)
- Sarah Burneyb. 1772English novelist (1772-1844)
- Dennistoun Burneyb. 1888GBBritish politician (1888-1968)
- Dwight W. Burneyb. 1892USAmerican politician (1892-1987)
- Venetia Burneyb. 1918GBBritish schoolteacher, namer of the dwarf planet Pluto
- Derek Burneyb. 1939CACanadian diplomat
- Ansar Burneyb. 1956PKPakistani human and civil rights activist
- Linda Burneyb. 1957AUAustralian politician
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)
Attested in 21 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.1K | #3,888 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.7K | #3,762 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.6K | #4,013 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Burney mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) person from Bernay, Normandy; place-name meaning 'Brenno's settlement'; (ii) from Irish Gaelic Mac Biorna 'son of Biorna' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Burney?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈbɝni/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Burney have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 11 thousand people named Burney in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled burney.
- How common is the name Burney?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,126 people named Burney in 2010, about 1 in 36 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Burney?
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/burneyThe 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, “Burney”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.