What We Know About the Bur Surname

There is no single Bur family crest for every bearer. Herald Lab researches the arms historically associated with the name and explains whose they were.

What Bur means

It is easy to miss Bur in an index if you only search for Burr. In origin, the name means “Prickly seed”.

Bur drops the “r” of Burr, a simplification that clerks often made. Regional accents shaped spellings long before dictionaries fixed them. Related forms: Burre. In the 2010 US Census, 533 Americans gave Bur as their last name (rank 40,909). That is enough to place it in the top 50,000 American surnames. From 1891 to 2000, 1,432 births in France were registered under Bur.

For the full story, order the Bur surname pack.